“It wasn’t your fault,” Owen said.

“And Salina wasn’t yours. Not what she did to Eva or Phillip or Cooper. Not what she did to those ex-husbands of hers or what she tried to do to everyone at her estate.”

We fell silent, lost in our own thoughts, in our own guilt about everything we’d done and all the regrets we had. Finally, after a few minutes, I spoke once more.

“Salina might be dead,” I said, “but that doesn’t change things. It doesn’t change me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Salina’s not just a onetime thing. It could happen again. I could choose to do something that you don’t approve of. You might disagree, you might tell me all the reasons not to do something, and I might just do it anyway, because I think it’s the right thing to do.”

It was something I’d been thinking about ever since I’d had those dreams about the Delov hit all those years ago. Fletcher had been right when he’d said that I’d hurt the people I cared about. That’s what I’d done to Owen when I’d killed Salina. But the old man had also been right about something else: that I’d rather have Owen alive and hating me than dead by Salina’s hand.

This simple fact had helped me make peace with the water elemental’s death and my part in it. More than that, it had helped me come to terms with what was happening between me and Owen now. I would always love him, but I would understand if he couldn’t get past this. I would understand if I’d ended us when I’d killed Salina. It hurt—it would always hurt—but I would accept it and move on. Because no matter what, Owen was alive, and Salina wasn’t, and that was all that I really cared about.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Because if things are going to work between us—really work—then you need to understand this about me,” I said. “I will do whatever I have to in order to protect the people I love—even if they don’t like my actions. Even if they hate me for them.”

He sat there and studied me, his gaze tracing over the smooth set of my shoulders, the determination in my face, and finally, the certainty blazing in my eyes.

“And what if you’re wrong about something?” he asked. “What then?”

“Then I’ll be wrong. And I’ll live with that—and all the consequences of my actions.”

He studied me a moment longer. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

“So where do we go from here?”