"I would have protected you."
I resisted the urge to let Amaya bite just a little bit deeper. "I think your actions just now show where your true allegiance lies, and it's certainly not with me. Or even, I'd hazard a guess, with Lauren."
"You've known for some time just how deep the well is when it comes to revenge." He reached out, but I snapped my head back and his caress hit my arm rather than my cheek. He let his hand drop again, but there was a brief flash of annoyance in his eyes. "I am sorry for the anger. I didn't mean to harm or frighten you."
He'd done both. But, more important, he'd shattered the trust I'd had in him.
His reaction had been deep and unthinking. He hadn't seen me as a lover, or even as a person. I was just some thing that had sidetracked a means of gaining what he wanted.
And he'd hated me for that.
Hated me enough to want to kill me. He might not have meant to, but that would have been the end result if Azriel hadn't turned up.
Of course, I had no doubt he would have regretted the momentary lapse of sanity, given that both he and everyone else needed me alive to find the damn keys. But regret after the fact wouldn't have done me a whole lot of good.
"You and I are finished, Lucian." I stepped back and sheathed Amaya. Her grumbles filled the back of my thoughts, and though the noise had dropped from banshee territory, it was still sharp enough to bring on yet another headache. "I can't be with someone I can't trust."
"Risa, don't be stupid. I apologized and I meant—"
"It's not what you meant," I interrupted testily. "It's what you did that matters. Damn it, Lucian, I saw the hate."
"What you saw was not aimed at you." Perhaps he saw my disbelief, because he added, a little more sarcastically, "There is only one person I actually hate in this room, and he can lower his sword. I really do not intend you harm."
"I could lower it, true," Azriel said. "But Valdis rather likes the taste of your flesh."
"We both know she will bite no further, as her master has no desire to flaunt reaper rules and thereby jeopardize becoming again what he once was."
"I would not be so sure of that, Aedh."