Holding her gaze, one of her hands clasped in his, his other palm pressed to her brow, then he allowed himself to touch her mind. The pain was dazzling in its sheer intensity and he was amazed that she was yet conscious.

Probing deeper, sifting through her consciousness, seeking out the fragments where memories joined one another, he sought the point where construction and reality met, where she had become.

Beneath his palm, he felt her slipping back into unconsciousness, her body going limp upon the couch. Her skin was almost as cool as his own, though chilly with perspiration and drying blood.

On the edge of his senses, he could feel her heartbeat, slow, so slow, he wished he could turn her and have done, because feeling her slip through his fingers like sand was making his focus falter.

Then, there it was.

So jarring and sharp, he wondered how he could have missed it.

With mental touches, he slipped between the edges of the boundary.

Energy struck him from all sides, like lightning strikes, vicious, raw, untamed, but with the ungraspable fluidity of the racing rivers, more powerful than anything he had imagined possible.

And as he felt the slow, rhythmless throb of Dawn’s heart, he wondered if perhaps, he should have listened to Herbert.