The Sentinels and never mind how high the cost may grow

he closed his eyes as she spoke -- he believed it, believed it! -- but he could no longer envision the colour, and the despair had robbed him of his ability to imagine a world that was green once more. he would never tell deirdre this, however; he would not steal from her what the famine had taken from him, but her father had lost all hope, and was wretched. 

he drew his little -- though perhaps not so little now -- witch toward him, and embraced her, and was quiet with all the weight of things he could not say, and his love for his daughters.