"I didn't want him to go," Jedao says, the stupid little-kid stubbornness that keeps welling up in his mouth, like blood from a too-deep wound. He tries to breath around it, tries to think. Tries.

"I've lost people I loved before. But it was always because I killed them." It was awful, it was almost unbearable, but he did it, he chose it. It feels impossible that it could simply happen to him, like a tornado twisting down out of a clear sky, like planets abandoning their orbits, plummeting into fire or the dark.