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“Ashwini, I’ you is an impossibility”

Her already brittle heart threatened to shatter “You don’t knohat I’ from you”

“I don’t need to know—and neither one of us has ever been in control of the thing between us It has its own stubborn, relentless will” He thrust one hand into his hair, began walking again, his next words so angry the heat of them seemed to melt the snow “The only way it would die would be if you repudiated e of the Quarter, he faced her “Is that what you want to do?” His tone was raw, his hands fisted “To tellhi the open sides of his jacket, she kissed hi to protect you” She released hiht with te va as you’re ht “You’ll regret this”

He wrapped his fingers around hers, the hold blatantly proprietary “I will never regret you!”

Ashould never regret him, either

And she knew Noti her ht of as to come, she said, “I shot Ransom a note with Felicity’s na I also fed her name to the computer tech on duty so he can troll the databases”

Vivek had been a lone ranger for a long time in the position, available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week He’d known everything, or so it seemed, but he was one of a kind “How’s Vivek?” she asked Janvier “Have you seen hiuild hunter had chosen vaive him back the use of his paralyzed body

“No” Expression dark yet, Janvier said, “He asked for privacy during his transformation, and Elena has made sure of it I don’t think she’s seen him, either”

She could understand why Vivek didn’t want his friends to see him while he eak and defenseless; paralyzed or not, he’d always been a force to be reckoned with “I guess I just want to know someone has a careful eye on hi such devastating long-terress”

Ashwini had met Keir in the aftermath of the battle She’d been stitched up by huelic healer had unexpectedly dropped by her apartment two days after she’d made Janvier leave With uptilted eyes of warm brown set in a delicately beautiful face, his black hair sleek and his body slender as a boy’s, Keir had appeared unutterably young and yet there’d been a wisdoaze that told her his was a soul old and noble in its peace

“It is past time I came to see you,” he’d said with a small incline of his head

Bemused, she’d invited him in, offered him a cup of herbal tea rather than coffee

His response had been a smile and the words, “Yes, of course that is what I would like”

Thewas that she hadn’t touched Keir even once, and yet she’d known he’d enjoy the tea, just as she kneas exhausted fro with the wounded at the Tower So she’d offered hi his eyes and dozing quietly in her favorite old arolden brown draped over her furniture, to have so space “Keir,” she said to Janvier, the two of thee she’d always feared “But he doesn’tseeentle and centered”

She knew Keir had incredible depths to hi that made up any life, but there was no cruelty, none of the horror she associated with iht to cling stubbornly to his eyelashes “The scholar who taughtlot and were inside the car, “said she’d done the same for Keir when he was a boy She told me he was the wisest child she’d ever known, an old, old soul reborn into a new body”

“Yes Lijuan boasted that she’d evolved to the next plane of existence, but I think Keir’s the one who’s done that” The healer was soht at his core

Janvier’s return gaze was hard “I won’t argue with you—on that point”

Gloves off and jacket unzipped in the warhtly snowy landscape as they left the Quarter The city sparkled through the white and it felt as if they traveled inside a snow globe, like the one Arvi had given her when she was seven She’d accidentally broken the treasured present theof the day he drove her to the place where they tried to “fix” her; and Arvi, he’d stared at the shards with the strangest expression on his face

At the tiry Now, she wondered if, just for an instant, he’d realized that what he was doing ht as irretrievably shatter the sister who adored hio for a drive?” she asked the vao and whose heart she was about to break as she’d once broken that snow globe “I have to show you so Ash’s instructions, Janvier left the city and the falling snow behind The tires currently on his car were designed for winter conditions, so the journey was smooth despite the occasional patch of ice He’d driven for approxiht roads when she directed hi not spoken much for the entirety of the drive

The road ell htly lit Janvier didn’t yet have the preternatural eyesight that ca vampirism, so he lowered their speed around the corners, in case the person on the other side was an idiot who thought he or she could see in the dark