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"Nicci, Kahlan is not an option for us. It is pointless to frame it as a choice between you and Kahlan being there for him; she can no longer fill that role. Chainfire took that woman. Only you can fill the role, now. You must marry Richard and be that woman for him."
"Marry him!" Nicci let out a brief, bitter laugh as she shook her head. "Richard doesn't love me. He would have no reason to want to marry me."
"Did you learn nothing at the Palace of the Prophets?" A
Nicci threw up her hands. "Now what are you talking about?"
"Men have needs." A
Nicci wanted to slap the woman. Instead, she said, "Richard isn't like that. He understands that love is what makes passion between a man and a woman meaningful."
"In the end that is what he will have. You would merely be helping that meaningful passion come to be. A man's heart will follow his needs. Are you so backward as to think that all couples marry for love? The wisdom of elders often creates a better match. In the absence of Kahlan, that is what we must do.
"It is your job to urge him into your bed and show him what you can do for him, what he is missing, what he needs. If you tend to his passions, his heart will be yours and he will, in the end, have that meaningful passion."
Nicci could feel her face going scarlet. She couldn't believe they were having this conversation. She had to change the subject but she couldn't seem to find her voice.
Nicci knew that she had Richard's friendship and trust. To do as A
"You must not allow this chance to pass you by, child-to pass us by."
Nicci seized A
A
Nicci narrowed her eyes. "What link?"
A
"Richard is our leader-not by birth, but by his own ability and force of will to see this through. He may not have set out to become the Lord Rahl, to become the one to lead us in this war, but along the way he grew into that role. He decided that life meant enough to him that he had to fight for his right to live it as he saw fit. He has inspired others who feel the same. It is only because of that that we have made it this far.
"He is not a boy at the Palace of the Prophets with a Rada'Han around his neck. He is his own man."
"Is he? Step back, child, and look at the larger picture. Yes, Richard is our leader-and I am sincere in saying that-but he is also a man who has the gift and knows nothing about it. More than that, he is a wizard with both sides of the gift. Lightning is bottled up in that man. What is the purpose of a Sister of the Light if not to teach such men how to control their ability and to-"
"I am not a Sister of the Light."
A
"I am not-"
"You are." A
"I am not a whore, not for you, not for anyone."
A
Nicci glared. "A minder from the Palace of the Prophets, that's what you really want me to be."
A
"The circumstances may not be what you would ask for in a perfect world, but this is the chance the Creator has given you, your chance to have the greatest joy possible to us in this life-love. Complete love. Your love right now is one sided, incomplete, deficient. It is merely sweet longing and imagined bliss. You can't know what love really is unless those feelings within your heart are returned in kind and set free. Only then is it real love, complete love. Only then can the heart truly soar. You don't yet know the joy of that most human of emotions."
Nicci had been kissed by rutting brutes. There was no joy in such things. A
A
She let the hand drop. "I'm not asking you to cause him to do wrong, but to do right, to do what he himself would want. I'm only asking you to save him from the kind of pain that risks him making a mistake, a mistake that will take us all down with him."
Nicci again felt the fine hair on the back of her neck stiffen.
"What are you talking about?"
"Nicci, when you were with the Order-when you were known as Death's Mistress-what did you feel like?"
"Feel like?" Nicci cast about in her mind for an answer to the unexpected question. "I don't know. I don't know what you mean. I guess I hated myself, hated life."
"And in your hatred of yourself did you care if Jagang killed you?"
"Not really."
"Would you act the same today? Act out of disinterest for yourself, for the future?"
"Of course not. Back then I didn't care what happened to me. What future could there be? I didn't think that I deserved any happiness-I didn't think that I could ever have any happiness-so nothing really mattered to me, not even my own life. I just didn't think that anything mattered."
"Didn't think that anything mattered," A
Nicci suspected that she was nearing the unseen jaws of a trap. "That's right."
"And how do you suppose a man like Richard is going to feel when he finally realizes that Kahlan is lost to him-when the finality of it really and truly sinks in? Will he think that life is worth living? Do you think he will feel the same co