"Pride, perhaps?" Solomon suggested, with an ironic but sympathetic smile. The smile of someone who knew exactly what she meant. "Everything you were most assured about was proved suddenly wrong. My faith. Your power."

He lifted his chin, turning his head consideringly. "The only difference is that I had a basis on which to form something else. I'm not even sure what it is yet. I'm not sure how far it will go. I'm not sure how much of me it will define. A lot, I imagine. But you." He watched the way her ragged edges caught, tumbling. The gap wasn't widening, but it was shaken, and badly. "You placed everything in yourself and now you've found something against which you can't measure, and it's broken you."

Even knowing what he'd just done, even knowing what he was seeing, Solomon's fingers itched to touch. Here was a power he wasn't expecting at all. Something no one else had. Something ... something with which he had to be very, very careful. Somehow he didn't think the Archangels would approve of his fiddling with peoples' souls. He folded his hands and placed them firmly in his lap. "You aren't going to figure out how to fill that hole by pretending it isn't there."