to resent you. They did not understand how much I love you, Lizzan.”
“You mean, how much you love the girl you knew.”
His heart twisted. “Lizzan—”
“Ten years, Aerax.” She cupped his face, her unhappy gaze searching his. “Are you still the same boy you were then?”
After all that had happened? After all that he knew now? “I am not,” he admitted hoarsely.
“And I am not the same girl.”
“The heart of you is the same,” he argued. “Do not say that has changed.”
“Perhaps my heart has not. As yours has not, either.” Her chin trembled before firming again. “But we are strangers to each other. And if we do not remain strangers, there are two ways forward for us—either what we learn of each other now will bring disappointment and taint the precious memory of all we were before . . . or we will learn to love each other again. But, Aerax”—with two fingers over his lips, she stopped him when he would have spoken—“the end will be the same. We will separate. You must return to Koth, true?”
Throat aching, he nodded.
“And I cannot,” she said thickly. “So this time, we must be sensible. My parents were wrong then. We would not have resented each other and eventually separated. But now there is no other end. We will part either now or later. Now is painful enough. But if I learn to love you again, and have to leave you again . . .” Her voice broke. “I cannot, Aerax. I cannot. So we must be strangers to each other now.”
It was sensible. Yet they’d had another option before. “Can we not be friends?”
She gave a teary-eyed laugh. “That is all I meant to do in this bath. Yet my fingers had not even pruned before I was riding your cock. You and I can never be only friends, Aerax.”
That was truth. Yet he could never be a stranger to her, either. “I will do my best to disappoint you.” It would not take much effort. “Then you will not be hurt, but glad to see the back of me when we reach Koth.”
Another laugh broke from her, and she rested her forehead against his. “If there is disappointment, it will be me disappointing you. On my part, I suspect that I will love you more than I ever have.”
“As I will you.”
“Then there is only more pain ahead.”
“I would bear that pain, Lizzan.”
“But I cannot.” She drew a broken breath. “I cannot. This quest is supposed to bring me pain to the edge of my enduring. But already, Aerax . . . Since leaving Koth, I’ve been so lost. And hurt. I cannot bear much more.”
And he could not bear hurting her. With agony clawing at his chest, he told her, “Then strangers we will be.”
She nodded, crying softly now with her hands still cradling his face, her forehead pressed to his. “It’s the only sensible path.”
“It is,” he agreed gruffly, and she kissed him, a sweet and salty press of her trembling lips. “But what of another seduction?”
A laugh shuddered through her breaths. Tears streaked her cheeks when she pulled back to wipe her eyes, and then she reached down to clasp the medallion between her breasts. “I’ll tell the Krimatheans how I survived the wraiths . . . but do not tell anyone else from Koth.”
At that moment, Aerax cared nothing of Krimathe or Koth. But always he would care for Lizzan. “It protected you?”
“One wraith had already . . .” Voice wavering, she touched her scars. “I could barely see through the blood in my eyes. Then my father was with me, his armor shredded—but he was unharmed. Until he gave this to me and then . . . he was . . .”
Torn apart. “He saved you.”
She swallowed hard before nodding. “As long as I can remember, he’d worn this. If the Kothan court had discovered that he’d carried some sort of magic with him . . . they would have said he’d never truly earned his rank. That his status would have been unfairly earned. But he had earned it. And I would not let him be dishonored. So I threw it into the lake alongside the Walk.”
Then the necklace should have been forever gone. And she had not been wearing it on the ferry boat. “Where did you find it?”
“Vela gave it to me. And said it was always meant to be mine.”