“Is that why you left Thendara? Because you could not share me? Was the love I was able to give you not enough?”

Linnea shook her head, refusing to be drawn into a quarrel. “No, it is not that. I simply—” She got up, restless yet still too much in command of herself to give way to pacing. “I wanted more. I thought we loved each other in those first days enough to find our way through any difficulty. How little I knew! It was my first serious love affair and, I suspect, yours with a woman. I didn’t anticipate how intense the feelings would be, how sweet, how overwhelming. I think we both went a little mad. I didn’t think . . .” Now she turned back to him. Shadows of remembered pain cloaked her eyes.

“I didn’t measure what I would lose against what I would gain. In the end, it wasn’t enough.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You have our daughter and as much of my heart as I am capable of offering to any woman. Is that not sufficient?”

Too late, after the words were said, Regis realized what she had given up. She had been a Keeper, one of the few elite Tower workers capable of occupying the centripolar position in a matrix circle. Through her supple, disciplined mind had run the interwoven psychic powers of every member of the circle. Their lives as well as their sanity had been in her keeping. Once, Keepers had been revered as gods, living apart and virgin, immune to normal human warmth. For a man to lift a hand to a Keeper or even assault her with a lustful glance had been punishable by death. Those times were long past; Keepers no longer trained in the old ways of inhuman restrictions. Linnea had not been a virgin, although she had set aside her work as a leroniswhen she came to him.

“Surely—surely you can still function as a Keeper?” Regis said. “You know how to do so safely?”

She sat down beside him again. The fragrance of her hair, some kind of spicy herb, filled him. “Of course, I know how to keep my channels clear,” she said. “I have known that since my first training as a monitor. I did not lose my skills along with my virginity. But, Regis—I cannot be both Keeper and mother.”

She paused to let her words sink in. “In a circle,” she explained, “I must put all other thought aside, leave all loyalties and considerations outside the door. The slightest lapse or indecision might have disastrous consequences. I cannot abandon Kierestelli, not even for a single night. She is always in my heart, in my thoughts. Can you understand that?”

Slowly, he nodded. He wondered what it was like to be so loved by a woman. His bond with Danilo was of quite another sort, one unique to their histories. Danilo’s catalyst telepathy had wakened his deeply suppressed laranwhen they were still teenagers. Danilo was the other half of his mind, of his heart. Yet in his encounters with women, in the happiness he had glimpsed in married couples, he sensed a different balance, a complementarity that both excited and puzzled him.

He felt a stirring of desire and admiration, of respect and then rising pleasure, in her nearness. They sat close enough so he could see the tendrils of hair that had escaped from the clasp at the base of her neck. He remembered touching the soft skin there, tasting her, feeling his own passion in her eager response.

“Could you teach Felix,” he asked, “give him the training he might have received in days gone by from a household leronis?”

“Yes, I could . . . if I were sure that Kierestelli would come to no harm in Thendara. And,” she added in a whisper, “if you wanted me there. I would not subject her—” and myself—“to your resentment.”

“My—? Linnea, if you do not believe my words, then believe this . . .”

Regis leaned forward and slid one hand beneath the coils of her hair, cupping the back of her head. She sighed and moved toward him. Deliberately, he lowered his laranbarriers so that his mind was open to hers. He offered her the tenderness now welling up in him, the response of his body to hers.

He had forgotten how soft her mouth was, how smooth her skin. It felt as if she were kissing him with her heart, not just her lips. Her touch was not like a man’s, not like Danilo’s, and yet it was perfect.

The thought struck Regis that it was impossible to compare one person’s loving with another’s. How could Linnea take Danilo’s place or he hers? Then all rational thought disappeared as he gave himself over to the kiss.

The rapport between them deepened, obliterating all outside awareness. Regis had forgotten how strong her laranwas, how supple her mind. Echoes rippled through him, wordless emotion and memory of the deep sharing they had once offered one another. In that world of thought, no time had passed. The first moment of their love was still going on, stretching into the future. In the opening of one heart to another, they were still bound.

The wave of passion crested. Linnea drew back, her eyes shining. The light from the fire burnished her hair to dark copper. Lips parted, cheeks flushed, she had never looked lovelier to him.

She rose and took his hand, smiling slightly. “My rooms, I think.”

Linnea had taken a suite in the older part of the castle, apart from the rest of the inhabitants. As they made their way down the chilly hallway, Regis sensed the muting of the background psychic chatter. Of course, someone with Linnea’s sensitivity and Tower training would prefer a degree of insulation.

As they entered the sitting room, the young maid who had been tending the fire stood up.

“Thank you, Neyrissa,” Linnea said. “I won’t need you for anything else tonight.”

The girl curtsied and hurried away. Linnea stretched her fingers toward the fire. Regis came to stand beside her, although he had no need of bodily warmth.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he said.

“You mean, will gossip about us fill the castle tomorrow morning?” She looked up at him with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I am a leronis.I have not granted any of my kinsmen the right to be the keeper of my conscience—or of my virtue, or my reputation—nor am I likely to. I tend to those matters as I myself see fit. My family accepted this when I went to Arilinn.”

She paused, somber now. “We are not so different in this, you and I. We do our duty as honor demands but according to our own understanding. It would have been far easier for you to set Danilo aside and marry. I’m sure DomDanvan Hastur and the entire Comyn Council would have been delighted.”

“I choose whom I take to my bed and with whom I share my life.”

“As do I.” Linnea closed the space between them and slipped her hands around his neck. Her fingers parted his hair, caressing the sensitive skin on his nape. Tilting her head back, she stood on tiptoe and whispered, “I choose . . .”

In the echo of her words, Regis realized that he, too, had chosen. This night would not be like so many others, the pleasantry of a few hours, the discharge of his responsibility to produce heirs for his clan and caste. In the past, women had been drawn to him because of his position and power, his beauty, his sensual personality. By the time Linnea entered his life, he had grown cynical about women. Because he could have almost any woman he wanted, he had wanted none of them. She had changed all that with the simple opening of her heart, a woman of his own caste, a trained Keeper willing to set aside her own dreams to ease his grief.

This was no dalliance, this night. Every kiss, every caress, created anew the love that had once flowed between them. Her joy magnified his own through their shared rapport. He danced through the movements, feeling how their differences complemented and enhanced one another.

At the peak of their pleasure, when all the world swirled around him in a rapture of iridescent light, Regis became aware of a change in that radiance, a gathering of energy into a tiny point. Golden light-that-was-more-than-light bathed the mote. Regis felt a sense of imminence, of condensing presence, and knew that Linnea sensed it also.