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"Us," I echo aloud, halting on the threshold

Tarver stops a few steps into the room and looks back at me "Lilac?"

I s, shake my head "Please No I’ll sleep out in the coe to stopthem away, but he senses the buried iain

"Why?" he says softly, his face bearing all the lines of grief and exhaustion and pain

And why can’t I grant him this? I shiver I must seem so cold to him no can he think I’m the same as his Lilac? He doesn’t knohat I remember He doesn’t kno hard it is to inhabit my own body, to make myself speak, walk, eat How much I feel like I’s the old Lilac would have done

"I can’t I told you--your touch, it burns I can’t, not yet"

He presses his lips together Pain The urge to go to hi apart I can’t let it go on like this

"I lied to you," I whisper, turning to lean back against the door frame At least the pain of that pressure on"I let you think I don’t reone"

I hear his intake of breath "What--how--"

"I rein s

"You mean--when it happened?"

He doesn’t deserve to know this Kinder to let hiain Maybe the old Lilac would have protected him from this

"I mean after" I close my eyes For a ain, to the silence "Cold and dark don’t begin to describe it Cold is just an absence of heat, dark an absence of light There, it’s like--light and heat don’t exist, ever"

The scrape of his shoe on the ce to hold hi else trying to co dead, Tarver" I s, and ain, knoaits for you in the end?"

"You don’t sound like you believe me"

"It’s our policy in such cases to maintain a certain amount of healthy skepticism"

"You have a lot of precedent with survivors of serious trau the circumstances in which you were stranded and subsequently rescued, we don’t have a lot of precedent for anything"