Free Get Off the Unicorn by Anne McCaffrey Page B

discarded them all, along with her histrionics.
    You idiot, you’ll never know till you try.
    Tentatively, without apparent effort, she reached out and counted the pulses of three . . . no four, sleepers. Afra’s was the faint one. But, Damia realized in calm triumph, it
was
there. Which brought her face to face with the second fact.
    She slid from her bed to stand by the window. Beyond the lawn of evergrass, beyond the little lake, to the copse of evergreens her glance traveled. And stopped. Instinct told her that Larak was buried there and the thought of Larak buried and his touch forever gone broke her. She wept in loneliness, biting her knuckles and pressing her arms tightly into her breasts to muffle the sound of her mourning.
    Out of the night, out of the stillness, the whisper tugged at her again. She stifled her tears to listen, trying to identify that sliver of sound. It faded before she caught it.
    Resolutely now, she laid her sorrow gently in her deepest soul, a part of her but apart forever. No matter what Jeff and Rowan said, she had caused Larak’s death and maimed Afra. Had she been less preoccupied, less self-centered, she would not have been so dazzled by the fancy that Sodan was her Prince Charming, her knight in cylindrical armor.
    Such a pitiful thing she was: a spoiled, rotten-hearted child, demanding a new toy to dispel boredom when all the time . . .
    The whisper again, fainter, surer. With a startled cry of joy, Damia whirled from her room, running on light feet down the hall. Catching at the door frame to brake her headlong flight, she hesitated on the threshold of Afra’s room.
    She caught her breath as she realized that Afra was sitting up. He was looking at her with a smile of disbelief on his face.
    â€œ
You’ve
been calling me,” she whispered, half questioning, half-stating.
    â€œIn a lame-brained way,” he replied. “I can’t seem to reach beyond the edge of the bed.”
    â€œDon’t try. It hurts,” she said quickly, stepping into the room to pause shyly at the foot of the bed.
    Afra grimaced, rubbing his forehead. “I know it hurts but I can’t seem to find any balance in my skull,” he confessed, his voice uneven, worried.
    â€œMay I?” she asked formally, unexpectedly timid with him.
    Closing his eyes, Afra nodded.
    Sitting down cautiously, Damia lightly laid her fingertips to his temples, and touched his mind as delicately as she knew how. Afra stiffened with pain and Damia quickly established a block, spreading it over the damaged edges. Resolutely, regardless of the cost to her own recent recovery, she drew away the pain, laying in the tender areas a healing mental, anesthesia. Jealousy, she noticed someone else had been doing the same thing.
    Isthia . . . has . . . a . . . delicate . . . touch . . . too.
He sent the thought carefully, slowly.
    â€œOh, Afra,” Damia cried for the agony the simple thought cost him. “You
aren’t
burned out. You
won’t
be numb. I won’t let you be. Together we can be just as powerful as ever.”
    Afra leaned forward, his face close to hers, his yellow eyes blazing.
    â€œTogether, Damia?” he asked in a low intense voice as he searched her face.
    Her fingers plucking shyly and nervously at his blanket, Damia could not look away from an Afra who had altered disturbingly. Damia tried to comprehend the startling change. Unable to resort to a mental touch, she saw Afra for the first time with only physical sight. And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine.
    How could she have blundered around so, looking for a
mind
that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman’s most important function in life begins with physical domination?
    â€œDamia—speechless?” Afra teased her, his voice tender.
    She nodded violently as