A blackness prickled at the edges of her vision. She realized she had not breathed, and inhaled deeply, but she could not look away. Behind him was a man she vaguely recognized, a ruddy-faced lord from a county nearby Hartwood, which only made it all the stranger.

Two women had settled at the front of the box, but the men continued some deep discussion, their heads bent together, one graying, the other darkest black.

A flash of memory: Cassandra's hand, white as moonlight against the jet of his hair, the curls leaping around the turn of her finger -

"Oh, God," Cassandra whispered.
Her brother Julian, who had insisted upon this jaunt, leaned closer. "I'm sorry-I didn't quite hear you."
She put her hand on his sleeve, trying to remember how to arrange her expression normally. "Nothing."

In the box across the crowded, noisy room, Basilio nodded seriously at something, and his hand settled in a quieting sort of way upon the shoulder of the small woman who sat nearby. She seemed hardly to notice. Even across such a distance, Cassandra read discomfort in her stiffness.

Abruptly, Cassandra stood, her limbs quaking. "Julian, I feel quite ill. I must go."
He leapt to his feet, solicitous, his arm circling her shoulders. "What is it?"

She waved a hand, bent to capture her shawl from the seat, and dropped it when her betraying fingers could not hold on to it. She stared at it, beads glittering along one edge. It looked like water, she thought distantly, the way it shimmered in a pool there on the dark floor of the box. It made her think of another shawl, on another floor, and she closed her eyes against the pain of that memory.

How could a week have changed her life so utterly? A single week, torn from the thousands and thousands that made up her life. Forty times that number had passed since then, and none of them had changed her, turned her inside out, made her into a woman she no longer always recognized.

Julian swept up the shawl for her and captured her hands, bending to frown closely. "You're shivering like a wet puppy!" Bracing her elbow, he said, "Let's get you home."
"Yes." She vowed to keep her eyes lowered, but the temptation was too great. One more glance at him. Only one.

But of course it was the dangerous one. For across that vast bowl of masonry and wood, across the milling scores of humanity in the gallery below, Basilio chose that moment to raise his head. Their eyes locked, and Cassandra's heart simply burst, flooding her chest with the scarlet blood he'd drawn with his gentleness, with his passion, with his words.

With his love. Yes, his love, most of all.

She fancied his face went pale, though it was impossible to see anything of the sort across such a distance. His hand still rested upon the shoulder of the woman, and she saw him take it away, hastily, as if it burned him.

It gave her courage. Tossing her head, a head of very red hair she knew glowed bright as copper, bright as sunlight, even in the darkness, she said calmly, "Please take me home, Julian."