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I nodded as if I understood exactly what that meant, then I offered him my hand. Not because I wanted to touch him, though that was there, but because of the lost look in his eyes and the way his hands kept rubbing the thinning velvet, as if touching it made him feel safer. He took my hand and gave me the first smile I’d seen since she-who-made-him had reared her vicious head. The smile was shaky ’round the edges, but it firmed up when he touched my hand.

I’d been afraid that when I touched him again that it would change. That there’d be lust, or love, or something else I couldn’t deal with, but that wasn’t what came through the touch of his hand. What came through was a sense of safety. Relief that I’d reached out to touch him first. If I touched him first, I couldn’t be that angry.

“I’m not mad,” I said.

His eyes widened just a little. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“Don’t you know what I’m thinking?”

“No.”

“Ask him if he knows what you’re feeling,” Nathaniel said.

“I just asked that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

I thought about it for a second. He was right. “Okay, what am I feeling?”

“Nothing,” Damian said, “you are very carefully feeling nothing.”

I thought about that, too, and just nodded. He was right. I felt numb, at most relieved that Damian’s need for safety overrode other complications, but really, truly, I felt nothing. I felt like one of those shells that washed up on the sand, so pretty, so clean, so white and pink, and so empty. That place inside me where Richard had been meant to fit, to fill, was empty, but not empty like a wound. Empty like that seashell, all slick and wet and waiting. Waiting for someone else to come along and slip inside and make that emptiness into their protection, their shield, their armor, their home.

Even thinking it that clearly, I still felt almost nothing. I realized it was close to that static emptiness where I went when I had to kill, but it wasn’t staticky. It was a peaceful emptiness, like gazing out to a horizon of just water and sky. Peace, quiet, but not empty, just waiting. Waiting for what?

Damian squeezed my hand. I smiled at him but knew it didn’t reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature’s insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid.

Well, I wasn’t going to die. You didn’t die of a broken heart, it just felt like you were going to. I knew from personal experience that if you just kept moving, acting as if you weren’t bleeding inside, you didn’t die, and eventually you stopped wanting to.

Micah came to stand in front of me. Once it had seemed odd to have such serious intelligence out of kitty-cat eyes. Now, they were just Micah’s eyes. He touched my face, and his hand was so warm that I wanted to rub my cheek against it, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. I just stood there with Micah touching my face and Damian clinging to my hand. I could feel that my face was as empty as I felt inside.

“You don’t have to go in there,” Micah said.

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

He put his other hand up, so that he framed my face between his warm, warm hands. “No, Anita, you don’t have to.”

Damian was rubbing his fingers across my knuckles the way he did when he was worried that I would be angry with someone. I wasn’t angry, or maybe he was worried about another emotion all together. Damian could help me be calmer, help me control my temper, and be less ruthless, or less quick to kill, but your servant can only give you what they have to share. Damian could not help me fight fear, or loneliness, or sorrow, because he carried too much of it inside himself. Today, the only real comfort he could offer was the touch of a friendly hand. But there are worse things to offer.

I closed my eyes, not to hide from Micah’s serious face, but to bask in the warmth of his hands. I had to close my eyes so I could feel his hands and not be distracted by the color of his eyes. I let