“So maybe they’re a little stylized,” he said with a shrug. “But you have to admit, still pretty sick.”

“I assure you that I one hundred percent do not have to admit that.”

“Agree to disagree about the vambraces, that’s cool.” He nodded to himself, then paused. “You look really great, Em. Very different, but great.”

“Do I, Gareth?” I demanded, slugging back another swallow. My better judgment insisted that I should really save myself the angst and walk away, but instead I found that I was downright itching for a confrontation. Maybe a trace of that fierce mantle magic still spiraled through my veins. “Or do I look more like, ‘Hey girl, you must be new here, how long are you in town?’ ”

He at least had the good grace to wince at that, dragging a hand down his face.

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, then, okay. I was hoping we could make, like, a gentleman’s agreement to pretend that never happened.”

I scoffed, amazed he thought I might be inclined to let him off that easy. “Pretty sure neither of us is a gentleman. So, yeah, this is most definitely how it’s gonna be.”

“Look, Emmy, I really am sorry about that,” he attempted, trying out another tack. “I was having . . . kind of a shitty night. The four-Jäger-shots-too-many kind. By the time we made it to the Cauldron, I wasn’t exactly seeing twenty-twenty. It was dark, I didn’t expect to see you there, and I just . . . I didn’t recognize you for a minute. It happens.”

Of course he still drank Jäger. All his pricey suits and adult bone structure aside, an overgrown frat boy still squatted inside that artfully tousled head.

“It happens to dipshits, maybe. And as I recall, you were toasting to Camelot’s expansion, so it couldn’t have been all that terrible of a night,” I pointed out. “So I’m going to need you to try that again.”

He looked on the verge of saying something, then shook his head instead, a mutinous flare of anger streaking across his face.

“Are you seriously not going to just chill a little, Emmy, even after an honest apology?” he demanded, knuckling back his hair, wincing a little as the vambrace thumped against his forehead. “I know we have history, but come on. Cut me a break. You must see what an awkward position I’m in, here, with you as Arbiter. Caught totally wrongfooted.”

I stared at him, my blood boiling as it always did at being exhorted to just chill, even more so at the fact that he was somehow managing to perceive himself as any kind of victim here.

“Oh, is my being back—and back with some clout—really just the worst for you? Are you even aware of how extensively you fucked me up back in the day?” It went against my dignity, and all my rules of self-preservation, to admit this to him, but I was now aflame with righteous fury. There was no turning back. “How worthless you made me feel? This is what they mean about actions having consequences, Gareth. What you did, it wasn’t the type of shit that conveniently fades away.”