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Her outburst cut across his cogitations

‘I don’t have a choice!’ she threw back at hi to do with a s about nant and then deserted her anyway, conde her to a misery she endured for the rest of her torer to help her—let alone the daughter he knew perfectly well he had! He can rot in hell for that! And for thinking he could buy me with his bloody o back to the poverty he deliberately keptit would make me malleable and desperate!’

Xandros could see her face working again, could hear the rage in her voicethem more luminous t

han ever Her fury was ani her beauty

From somewhere deep in that part of his brain he’d had to silence before, the part that he had refused to pay any attention to, caeous he tried to stifle it at birth

But it would not be stifled Would not be silenced

Because there was another way she could avoid being conde poverty His ood as well A considerable aood

As his eyes rested on her agitated, stricken face, which for all the e in it was still not di in her eyes, lighting them into a blaze, he heard words rise up in his throat Insane, surely, as it would be to say them

And then he said them anyway

‘What if there was a different alternative?’

His eyes held hers, holding the up in him from that deep, impossible place in his brain

She stared Blankness was in her face

‘What alternative?’

He held her eyes still—those beautiful, expressive eyes of hers—hts were churning wildly Was he really going to say what he was about to say? Could he mean it?

Then there was nohi the words