"It was so bad when he died, Quentin," Jedao murmurs, hiding his face against Quentin's shirt again, dragging in his breaths. "He was - so happy the last moment, really at peace, and I felt him walk away and he was gone, right down in my soul where we'd been holding each other up, and I couldn't even hate him for it."

It shudders out of him, like the pain shook some keystone loose, and now the rest of it is falling in chunks.

"It was grief but it wasn't just - it felt like someone pulled a plug somewhere in the awful core of me, and everything I am was going to drain away, or tar seeping up through me, and I was going to be like that forever, if I couldn't get my balance back, if I couldn't stop it up. And I hadn't anything to do but sit and feel it but then there were the deaths and everything else needed doing."