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“We’ve managed to slow your degeneration,” continued Fairhrim. “Let’s see if we can reverse it. After what you’ve done, it’s the least I can do.”

The sparkle in her eyes might have been the stars; it might have been a secret smile.

Osric felt the weight of some doomed and inexpressible truth.

They tarried long at that window, not quite in, and not quite out. They succumbed to the slow enchantment of a June night. White moths, pale and brilliant in the dark, spun by in shivering constellations, flowed into one another, collapsed in and out of one another, and, whirling upwards, became part of the sky. In the east, clouds gleamed with tomorrow in them.

They talked until the stars went out.

Fairhrim, silver framed in the window, became a focal point: a notan study of light and dark. Unimportant things became important. Her lashes painting their own shadows against her cheeks. Moonlight subliming her hair. Her hand beside Osric’s on the windowsill, so close their fingers brushed.

Her touch was an aching, fragile beauty. It was a hinge that swung him into something else. An awareness. An understanding that came in a bursting, ecstatic, agonised thrill.

He and she sat in the moonlight as lover and beloved.

He hadn’t paid attention. He had been stupid—gods, so stupid. He no longer owned his heart.

The thief was unconscious of her crime. She asked, “Is something the matter?”

And, for once in Osric’s life, the lie didn’t come easily. It was too enormous. He shook his head and held the truth between his teeth.

The realisation was a breaking point. He saw before him the beautiful impossibility of it all, league upon league of impossibility stretching between them. It was ruthless folly; it was the sorrow of a thing ending before it could begin; it was a new circle of torment; it was a delicious wound. What joy seamed by misery. What pleasure fraught with pain.

It hadn’t been love at first sight, but at last sight—gods, at last sight—

Far above, the moon hung like a promise.