I know I did not take you and he did not take you. I thought that for a long while, but you chose me, and then you chose him, and choosing is hard—one choice is never the end of the story. Gamayun told me this was all a story, and I had to be sure to love you, or else it would not work out as it should. He needn’t have worried: In the space of one heartbeat to another I loved you and I was lost to you, like one of those dead soldiers made of cloth.
