“Cass pulls from my embrace, her mind reaching into my heart. Pain, anger, confusion pass through her eyes. My pain. My anger. My confusion. She swallows hard. “Because?”“Because I traded it all, my heart, my memories, everything. For her.”

“That’s my girl,” she said, her eyes holding a shared pain as she saw my confusion. “Al, where are you going to put her? Not in your room. She’d pull a line through you and kill you when you hog the blankets. I’ll take the waif in. I promise I’ll bring this one up properly.”

“Scarlet shut the door behind her, leaning against it as she responded. "I came because you have been in great pain.""Yes. And because of my great pain you still live. It seems my isolation is good for your wellbeing.""The strength of my pulse has little to do with the health of my heart.”

“I press my lips hard against hers, tasting her desire, her pain, her love, her confusion. At once I’m in two lives, two worlds, two places.”

“But will I always love her? Does my love for her reside in my head or my heart? The scientist in her believed that emotion resulted from complex limbic brain circuitry that was for her, at this very moment, trapped in the trenches of a battle in which there would be no survivors. The mother in her believed that the love she hadd for her daughter was safe from the mayhem in her mind, because it lived in her heart.”

“So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”