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“It’s not easy.”

“Could've fooled me," he mumbled.

“Forgiving yourself can be harder than forgiving others. I find it easy to forgive someone else for their mistakes while finding it hard to move on from my own." She paused, looking away. "I still feel bad for what I did to Kyer and Maude and that was almost ten years ago.”

When she glanced back, he was smiling, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I can understand that.” Jarek pulled a piece of leather from a book. “Caine… he died alone because of me. Many of my past actions I can overlook or ignore, but I fear I will never let that one go.”

Lily’s lips parted in gentle awe at what was unfolding before her. She never questioned that Caine might’ve been more than Valen’s Second Incarnation or how he died, only knowing that he was the younger brother and last victim of the greedy First Incarnation’s final grab for power.

Jarek—Draven—was so much more than that. “It was an accident,” she breathed.

His expression softened. There it is again. Confusion, and more notably pain, was written clearly across his face. He sighed, moving toward the window bench, and collapsed into it. He placed his elbows on his knees and raked his hands through his hair. “It happened after I was fused to the Serpent. Kyer says it was defending my body, but”—he pinched his eyes shut and shook his head—“it was my fault. I should’ve done something sooner. I let it get to that point.”

“Jarek, I—” Lily broke off her sympathetic apology, knowing it’d do her no good. She worried her hands, searching for something else. “Punishing yourself won’t change what happened. You can put all of Eizreth back just the way it was, and Caine will still be gone. But that doesn’t mean you have to be.”

His vexed stare lifted to her, and Lily’s body yearned to leap into his and wrap her arms around his neck, pulling him close until everything hurting him soaked into her bones.

“Nothing about what happened or what will happen has an easy answer. If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

“I know you would,” he murmured, watching her in a way that sent a shiver across her skin. It reminded her of the gentle look he wore when he held her chin in the wagon, then again before he left her riled up and alone. Except this gaze was intense. Unyielding.

Lily glanced toward the door as if it could rescue her. “I should go now…”

He didn’t waver. “You should, yes.”

“It’s late.”

“It is.”

Lily bit her lip, fidgeting but not moving. “Aren’t you going to tell me to leave?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I want you to stay.”

A surge of heat rose up from her abdomen. She shouldn’t like the way he was looking at her. His words shouldn’t be wrapping around her heart so tightly that it turned her mind and body to putty. But he did, and Lily couldn’t hide it from him, nor did she want it to stop. Whatever was threading between them drowned out all the other uncomfortable feelings warring within her.

Heart thrumming in her ears, she silently moved to the bench and sat down beside him. She was close enough she picked up on his scent again, but not enough to sense his warmth.

Free from the overbearing influence of the Serpent, Jarek’s complexion was clear. Hair a little mussed, cheeks flushed, and eyelids heavy—he was undoubtedly handsome. Her admiration trailed over his neck again and lingered on his chest. She lifted her hand, then froze.

“Can I touch you?” Lily asked.

Jarek was watching her with dark eyes. His fingers found the back of her hand, his thumb her palm. He gently stroked her skin, his expression asking a silent question in response.

Can I touch you too?

A silly request, Lily thought, considering he’d touched her plenty. But this didn’t feel like a strategy to elicit a planned reaction out of her. There was no motive, no pretense—just a simple desire Lily wanted to indulge.

She nodded. Jarek brought her hand to his chest, placing their hands atop his pulse, beating hard and fast.

A faint smile touched her lips. The moment lasted for only a breath, but in it, nothing else mattered. Her guilt about what she left behind and what she did faded to tranquil silence, and all of her responsibilities awaiting her in Markoth and Rimore turned to dust on the shelves, leaving only the warmth of his presence and the feel of his anxiety in perfect echo of what beat behind her ribs.

Lily’s nails nicked the edge of the charm hanging from his neck. With little thought, she reached for it. Jarek didn’t stop her.

“Valen liked to pick and choose his traditions,” he said. “Ordained under the Guardian weren’t permitted to join its Order until they were at least seven. My birth mother died in childbirth, so he gave me to a woman who lost her son in one of his earliest conquests that brought Reatia from Omon to Eocera. This belonged to her.”