“I’m not angry he stayed,” she admitted after a moment. “I’m angry he waited until I couldn’t push him away.”
“That’s fair.”
There were no people in the courtyard, which only moonlight spread on stone benches and rose bushes.
“I don’t hate him,” she said suddenly.
Felix raised his brows.
“I simply do not know what to identify with him anymore.”
---
That evening the nurses dimmed the lanterns, and quitted her room, leaving her at last.
Her legs ached. Her ribs burned.
But she stood.
She walked slowly, carefully to the little table beside the farther wall where the gifts lay awaiting attention she went slowly, carefully.
She ran a hand across the comb. Traced the edge of the book’s cover. Took a breath near the tea tin.
Then she turned away.
Not out of rejection.
But readiness.
