Adrian and I exchanged brief glances. Staying overnight hadn’t come up in any of our planning. “Not here,” he said adamantly. “Not with you.”

“Dismiss me all you want, but I’ve made the best of what I’ve got,” Rand said angrily. “I never fit in, never played by their rules, and one by one they rejected me. That’ll happen to you, just wait. That’s the price of marrying her. You lost everything you could have had, could have been, as an Ivashkov. Soon you’ll see what it’s like, drifting from place to place.”

“We have to go check on my friends,” Adrian told him, taking my arm and steering me away. “Nice running into you.”

“You’re a terrible liar, boy,” Rand called after us.

“Is he right?” I asked quietly, once we’d put some distance between the guest cabin and us.

“That I’m a terrible liar? No. I’m a fantastic liar.”

I came to a halt, forcing him to as well. It was dark enough that our only light came from strategically placed lanterns along the camp’s main path. “Adrian, I mean what he said about me . . . did I really cost you all that? We always talk about me being on the run from humans, but you gave up the life of a royal to—”

“Sydney,” Adrian interrupted, cupping my face in his hands. “Never, ever think like that. I don’t regret anything we’ve faced. Being with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, the one perfect decision I’ve made in a lifetime of fumbling and poor judgment. I’d go through it all again to be by your side. Never doubt that. Never doubt how I feel about you.”

“Oh, Adrian,” I said, letting him wrap me in his arms, surprised at the bubble of emotion welling up within me.

He held me tightly. “I love you. If anything, I can’t believe you gave up everything you did to be with me. You changed your whole life for me.”

“My life didn’t even begin until I met you,” I told him fiercely.

Adrian pulled back and looked at me closely, shadows on his face. “When you see someone like him, like Uncle Rand, does it make you nervous? That I might turn out like that?”

I felt my eyes widen. “No,” I said adamantly. “You’re nothing like him.”