Rein glared, the even quality she had maintained until now suddenly very absent. So he meant to hurt her, did he? She had expected better. "And what if I did? What does it matter how the change came so long as it did?"

She spoke under obvious strain, because this among all things mattered to her. She had been mended, she had been forgiven... but it had taken another to save her from herself. To be judged weak for that failure, to be reviled by those who could not forgive her sins, these she could accept. But for someone to make light of the change itself, the defining moment of her life, the work of the one she loved... to speak of that as some flippant whim, a tired lie...