"Then why the fuck did you choose a lie that made me look stupid?!" She yelled at him.
Because for one catastrophic moment, Arik had no answer that would not make everything worse.
He felt the question strike through him with more force than the slap had. Not because of the volume - though her voice, sharp and broken with fury, cut cleanly through the soft hum of the winter wards - but because she was right, and there was no elegant system in the world strong enough to hold that truth upright once spoken plainly.
Natalie was shaking.
Not dramatically. But he felt it in the tension locked through her shoulders, in the rigid line of her back under his hand, in the furious, mortifying effort with which she was keeping herself together while half-hidden against him because there was nowhere else to put the tears she refused to let the world see.
And he had done that.
