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was no reason to disturb you with Lucio’s mad schemes.”
    “I had a right to know the truth.” Her voice was strained. “You should have told me. Would you prefer that I hate you for something you didn’t do?”
    “Does the reason for the hate matter?” he asked bleakly.
    “I don’t hate you.” She heard the words emerge from her mouth and rose jerkily to go and stand at the railing, staring blindly toward the mountains.
What had she said?
Her control was slipping, and she grasped at it desperately. She knew Andres had gotten to his feet, because he wouldn’t sit while a woman stood. Sheknew he was behind her. “I just can’t understand …”
    “Sara.”
    She didn’t move, didn’t turn. No wonder his voice had moved a country already long sick of revolution and suspicious of promises to take up arms and fight yet another war. How easily it moved her, even now. And she was suspicious of promises too. She didn’t want to fight. “Do you know how my parents died?” she asked abruptly, her voice uneven.
    “No. You never told me.”
    Sara turned stiffly and faced him, her arms folded protectively, warning him off. “Terrorists.”
    Andres closed his eyes briefly, and his face tightened. “I’m sorry, Sara.”
    “They were in Europe. Just … coming out of a restaurant. It was their anniversary, you see, and they’d been celebrating. When the bomb went off, it shattered windows for a block. And there wasn’t much left of the restaurant. Fifty people died, including my parents. Including a young mother and her baby who were strollingalong the sidewalk. All dead. And do you know who claimed responsibility for the explosion?”
    He knew. And he now knew why she had run away from him in such anguish. “The Final Legion?”
    Sara nodded. “The Final Legion. Such a grand-sounding name, isn’t it? Such a grand name for a pack of soulless murderers. They claimed responsibility, grabbing every headline they could, railing against a corrupt society. And they congratulated themselves on their strike for freedom. Then they just melted away … laughing.” She caught her breath raggedly and lifted her chin, staring at him from hot, hurting eyes. “Six months later I came to Kadeira with a charming man and found out that he allowed them to live here. Knowing—
knowing
—what they were, he gave them a home.”
    “
Dios
, Sara, I’m so sorry.” He stepped toward her, his hands lifting to hold her shoulders gently. “I never wanted to hurt you that way—”
    “Is there another way?” she asked fiercely, jerking back from him and moving to put a safe distance between them. She didn’t want him totouch her, because when he did, she thought she could mindlessly forgive him worse than terrorists, and that realization terrified her.
    Andres slid his hands into his pockets and met her gaze steadily. “What would you have me say? I can’t turn back the clock, Sara. I can’t tell you they were never here. They
were
here, and I
did
allow them to stay.”
    “Why?
Why?
” Baffled, she shook her head helplessly. “Because they paid you money? What kind of man does that make you, Andres?”
    He stood looking at her for a long moment with something almost hesitant in his eyes. And then, in a change that was as visible to her as a curtain dropping, he was shut inside himself. And she was implacably shut out.
    “If you don’t know what kind of man I am, Sara,” he said remotely, “then nothing I could say would give you that knowledge. But I will tell you this: If I could turn back the clock, I would change only one thing. I would make very certain that you learned of the Final Legion’s presence in Kadeira from me, and not from someone else.”
    “Only that?” she whispered.
    “Only that. I would change nothing else. And I will not apologize for my actions, Sara, because I do not regret them. Do you understand? Given the identical situation, I would act now as I acted then.”
    The unequivocal