For a second she lay, feeling the stupidest of stray details filtering into her consciousness. The shouts of laborers working on the quay. The wind blowing through the open shutters. But most of all feeling him, all the way to her toes, so her whole body was liquid warm.

She curved her lips inanely. It had always been like this between them. She'd not only plummeted from the tightrope stretching the gorge, but been obliterated in the firestorm sweeping it.

What she did, ...