It's strange, watching from the outside as someone goes through the same realization he did--I only had half the story, what I assumed wasn't true. It's strange and it wakes emotions in him he's not sure he likes, the same doubt and and remorse for misjudgment he'd come away with after their first conversation.

It was easier, not to see parts of yourself in someone you'd long believed you hated.

But the world's not made for ease.

"We all," Myr says softly, once Anders has reached his conclusion aloud, "put together the story we wanted to hear from the truth we actually heard. Miracles that came at a dreadful cost because what one man gains, another has lost. An empty Fade because the Maker's power could drive His first children away. And spirits of the dead that truly lingered because--"

He looks away at that, studying something across the hall and breathing out in a low sigh. "I never worked that one out. It didn't seem worth asking too closely and dissolving everything else like it was a dream."

Demons had promised him his eyes before and it hadn't been hard to resist, knowing what they'd take in trade. But say the cost is mine to bear, and mine alone,...