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you would achieve great power, but it must be your choice. Without true desire, no matter how brief, binding us, what I can give you would be worthless. I understand why you shield yourself."
         Looking into his eyes, she thought he did. Riordan de Cimmerian had his own demons, his own reasons for keeping his heart as closed as hers. That he had been willing to help her meant all the more.
         She thought of Connell. The courtyard. His bruising kiss and the inside of her lip still wounded from it.
         She looked at de Cimmerian. "I made a mistake ten years ago, and threw away the love of a man who would have given me everything."
         "A magicreator?"
         She shook her head. "He was the son of my parents' butler and cook. We had known each other since infancy. We played together as children. And when we got older…" She smiled a little. "We were foolish. We thought nobody would know."
         "But you could not take him as your ahavatara b ecause he did not have magic."
         Again, she nodded. "Yes."
         "Did he know what happened to you?"
         She hesitated, remembering. "Yes. He knew. He blamed himself for not protecting me. But when he tried to love me, I couldn't let him. I ran away."
         "And now?"
         "Now," she said slowly, "I have found him again."
         "Then might I suggest, Mistress Valerin, you don't let your opportunity slide away again?"
         Once again he was the Instructor Primus, distant, though now his consideration of her had disappeared. B ecause he knew, s he thought. She was no longer a mystery to him. He understood her now, and he did not despise her for her past.
         She'd experienced moments of revelation in her work when the columns of figures had formed a picture so clear and precise it was impossible to ignore. Now, even without the equations, she understood something so clear and shining she felt the worst sort of fool for being blind to it before.
         Riordan de Cimmerian, a man neither kind nor generous by any description, knew her truth, and he did not hate her for it. He did not turn from her in disgust, and he did not even love her.
         If a man who did not love her did not turn from her in disgust, neither would a man who did.
         "I understand, sir. And, sir, if I might be so bold…" She paused. "You might take your own advice."
         His eyes narrowed, and again she caught the glimpse of the man who so many feared. "You are bold."
         She nodded. "I plead your mercy."
         He stared at her a moment longer, the weight of his gaze unreadable. "You're dismissed, Mistress Valerin."
         "Thank you, sir."
         He nodded, not looking at her any more. Elspeth left his office with much to think about.
         Arithmancy was a far more precise practice than Divination. Divination used signs and portents to predict the future, while Arithmancy used numbers and calculations to determine how choices would affect outcomes. The difference of something as simple as one number could result in an end completely different than if one used another number or calculation to figure it.
         She spent several hours at her desk, running numbers. She factored every possible equation, ran every scenario she could think of, added and subtracted every element. It was, perhaps, the mathematical equivalent of "he loves me, he loves me not", but it was what she knew best how to do. In the end, it came down to two results, the difference of one small equation, one factor, a single number that when used or eliminated in the overall formula created two results. One, positive. The other, negative.
         When it came down to the line, there was nothing she could do to determine which of the sums was going to be accurate. No choice she could make to sway the results. Two outcomes seemed equally likely.
         She couldn't put a numerical value on love; couldn't use