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to the privy opens, blinding light from the passageway flooding the room—a lamp held in Kol’s hand. He brings it in and closes the door, and she’s exposed again: a rabbit under the white glare of a bright owl’s eye. The owl comes closer, saying nothing, staring intently with the raptor’s split attention, an ear out for Fyn’s return. She tries to press deeper into the wall, but there’s nowhere to go.
    Where only his gaze exposed her before, he takes it further, exposing her body without consent while she stands helpless, staring into the light, trying not to be there, trying not to feel.
    Satisfied at last with his exploration, Kol washes up in the basin and goes out, taking his owl-eye light with him. Too terrified to move, she wets herself without making it to the pot two feet away. Warmth spills down to the floor.
    Jak opened the door and nearly tripped over Ra, huddled trembling against the cold ground. When the dark sapphire eyes looked up into Jak’s, it was obvious what had happened. Jak’s unbidden thoughts—the memories Jak had managed to suppress for almost twenty years until tonight—had been more than loud. They’d been deafening. Ra knew everything.
    Edging back into the outhouse, Jak tried to hide once more, slinking low on the floor. Ra fumbled to her knees and reached for the door, but Jak slammed it shut and held it from the inside so Ra couldn’t get in. Don’t let him come in . Ra banged on the door, higher up now.
    â€œNo!” Jak shouted. “Go away!” But the door was too hard to hold against Ra. Ra had torn iron bars from the jail cells at the temple in Rhyman like arms from their sockets. She wanted in, and she was in, and Jak cowered.
    Ra said nothing, lifting Jak to an unwilling slump, and took Jak from the outhouse, back across the frosty ground to the yellow band of light that was the door of Mound Ahr. Inside, she let Jak sag against the pile of their bed.
    Jak pressed into the blankets, hot with shame, wanting to be dead. “I don’t want you to know. I don’t want anyone to know.”
    Ra stretched her body over Jak’s, arms protecting against anything that desired harm to Jak, except for Jak alone. “I am not anyone.” Ra began to sing a strange melody, high and foreign—a Rhymanic lullaby, perhaps, sung only to children of the Meer—and Jak slept.
    It was morning again. Time seemed to have grown capricious. Jak had slept without dreams, empty, a coma, and that had been good. There had been no thoughts at all, just respite. There was something Jak wanted to forget.
    The night rushed in then, uncouthly, and the pit of Jak’s stomach tightened against a stab of shame. Ra knew. Jak was exposed.
    Ra eased onto her side next to Jak on the blankets and brushed back the fine hair that hid Jak’s face, but Jak shrugged her away.
    â€œYou brought this into my head,” Jak accused. “You made me think of it.”
    â€œNo, midtlif . No.”
    â€œHow else? I’d forgotten about…Kol.” Jak nearly gagged on the word. It had been deeply forgotten. It hadn’t existed. The man Jak could only bear to call Kol, and never “Father”, had died, mercifully, when Jak was fourteen, and Jak had been liberated. By the time Jak seduced Geffn, it had already disappeared. Now Ra had found it and dragged it into the white, naked light.
    â€œPerhaps by my presence,” Ra acknowledged. “By my speaking of the fear and hesitation you weren’t consciously aware of when I touched you. Because a Meer’s words create, your memories couldn’t remain buried. But never by my intention. I would never willingly inflict pain on you.”
    â€œBut you knew.” Jak spoke into the blankets. “You were making love to me, and then you stopped. I didn’t know, but you did. You knew.”
    Ra propped herself on one elbow, respectfully distanced. “I only