Jared wants to buy a bed, an enormous one. Emperor-size. God-size. He wants it framed with walnut-dark wood, postered, its sheets all cold satin and deep midnight blue.

There should be only one pillow. This is important, as is the real-candles chandelier. The sheets are important, their chill and their smoothness: they must be neither flat nor rumpled, but lying in a precise, lazy spiral that draws up tight around the center.

And in the center, the most important part of all: he and Luther, curled tight to each other, very small and warm and alone on their vast midnight plain.