Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.

We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread.

The knowledge that he had left me with no intent ever to return had come over me in tiny droplets of realization spread over the years. And each droplet of comprehension brought its own small measure of hurt.

Wide gape the gates of yellowed bone. A tongue of plank is our path between the teeth as we walk toward the gullet. Here I will be devoured. This is a true thing, near unavoidable on any path. I must enter those jaws.

For he was the Fool now, all of Lord Chance and Lady Amber and Lord Golden scraped away by sorrow. He was no one's Beloved now.

When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.

And the world re-ordered itself around me. I spoke each word carefully. 'You are so stupid.

If he ever wanted vengeance on me for all I did, he has it now. This is the worst thing he could do to me. Now I know how it feels to be left behind. As I left him.

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved. Beloved.He could not say the word, but I knew it. So did his Fool.