She collapsed, sobbing with effort. And cursing.

Vehemently.

He stroked her back and her hair, fighting the desire to take her into his arms. "I'm sorry. Tern," he said, "I should never have challenged you."

"I sh-should have b-been able to . . ." Her whisper caught, and she buried her face in an arm.

"Should, maybe, but to push yourself too hard . . . to risk permanent damage. Nothing can be worth that, Tern."

"And that was nothing compared to the challenges we used to make to one another in practice."

She rolled over and lifted herself cautiously, seeming to check each joint and muscle, rising clear to her feet, stretch- ing, testing, until she was satisfied. Then she settled beside him, legs crossed, back straight but relaxed.

"Risk, Khy, is attacking the rings with insufficient strength. Risk is not being willing to challenge death with each and every breath, because uncommitted moves are the essence of failure, and failure on the rings is synonymous with death."

Real death, or figurativeto a dancer like Temorii, there was no difference. He'd watched, with his heart in his throat as she tumbled along a sheer cliff edge, or jumped an abyss without a second thought to the death that lay a misstep away. For Temorii, to dance was to live. It was also to defy death.

A fact of which he reminded himself as his longing flared without warning. But it was easier, now, than it had been a week ago, to tame his passion. He knew now that whatever happened in Khoratum, he could not be responsible for preventing so great a talent from fulfilling its obvious destiny.

Which altruism did not mean he didn't regret the loss.

Just his luck, to finally find those elusive urges in himself, only to have to deny they existed.

A callused hand covered his. A hand that, save for her calluses and his manicure was not so different. She was an illiterate entertainer from the Khoramali Hills, he was from the center of the civilized world, beneficiary of the greatest tutors of the age, and yet they had the same long, thin fingers, the same prominent knuckles and veins.

Who knew what else they might share?

Almost without conscious thought, he turned his hand to clasp hers and reached for that inner spark he believed he'd sensed the first time they met, the awareness he himself had shut down. And for the first time since they'd left Khora- tum, he realized how . . . empty he felt, that he actually missed that sense of {Deymorin} and {Nikki} underneath his skin.

And for a moment, he thought he did sense a shimmering on the other side, her side. A shimmer, but no more, a~dd even that much could have just been imagination. T