she shoved him hard. He staggered back, eyes flying wide in surprise. “Don’t you dare!” she shrieked at him. “Don’t you stand there and snigger at me and say you were in love with me but don’t know why you did the one thing certain to break my heart and drive me away.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” he shouted back. “I was stupid and I was terrified. You said you loved me and I-I panicked.” He raked a hand again through his already wild hair. “I knew it was the worst thing I could do to you. And when you found us…” He turned away to stare into the fire. “I’ll never forget the look on your face. And when I heard you’d left Annfwn, I was…” Blowing out a harsh breath, he met her accusing gaze. “I was relieved.”
She huffed out a bitter laugh, reliving that rending pain, the betrayal. “A relief to be rid of me, I’m sure.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Relieved that I didn’t have to face you, to justify actions that couldn’t be justified.” Dragging his hands from his pockets, he swept her an elaborate bow. “And thus the feckless bastard before you was born: lazy, useless, loathed by one and all.”
Staring at him, she found herself dry eyed at last, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”
“Good,” he said, jamming hands back in his pockets. “Because I don’t deserve any sympathy, least of all from you—the one person I cared about most and the one person I’ve hurt the worst.” He took a deep breath. “But I want to apologize to you. I don’t expect you to forgive me, and certainly not to forget, but I am sorry, Salena. I’m so very sorry for how I hurt you and betrayed your trust.”
Her heart turned over, a painful wrench that made her dizzy. “You never apologize,” she said faintly.
“Yes, well, I saved them all up for this.” He gazed at her, longing in it. “I only wish I could do or say something that means more.”
“Do you know what I threw in the fire?” she asked, the question jumping from her lips.
He assessed her cautiously. “I’m afraid to find out.”
“You,” she said bluntly, rather enjoying his flinch. “I wrote down your name and burned it, because I just want to be done with you, Rhyian. With this.” She flapped a hand between them.
“Fair enough,” he replied. “Do you think it worked?”
“Obviously not,” she ground out, “or I wouldn’t be locked in this room with you, rehashing the worst experience of my life.”
“Maybe we have to wait for midnight,” he suggested, “when Moranu will magically wipe the slate clean.”
It seemed absolutely impossible that she wanted to laugh at that. But that was Rhyian, too—irreverent and cynical in all the same ways that she was.
“Amusingly enough, I burned something similar. A rune,” he explained when she raised a brow, “representing the past self and all its myriad flaws. I’m fully confident that sunrise will see me as an entirely new person.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way,” she commented drily.
“No? Alas for that. I doubt that anything less than divine intervention could make me into a worthy person at this point.”
She considered him, taken aback by the level of self-loathing in his words. He wasn’t being flippant, either, but brutally honest. “The goddesses can’t change us, Rhy,” she said gently. “We have to do the hard work to change ourselves.”
“Ah. Hard work,” he replied in the same tone. “Also not my forte.”
“It could be, if you want it enough.”
“Hmm.” Moving slowly, he edged closer to her. “Maybe if there’s a tempting reward?”
She didn’t step back—couldn’t make herself—but she stopped his approach with a hand on his lean chest. “I can’t be your reward. That’s all in the past. I can’t… go through that again.”
He grimaced, then searched her face. “But we both burned the past. It’s gone. What we have is the present. Tonight. Right now.”
“I—” She hated how she faltered, how she so wanted to hope. How foolish it would be to let him hurt her again.
“I have something for you,” he said, drawing a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Taking her hand, he placed the square in her palm and closed her fingers over it, holding her gaze all the while. “I can’t change the past, Salena, but I can try to change the future.”
With shaking fingers, she opened the tightly folded square, the