Melio finished the sentence hesitantly, reacting to the way Mena cut her eyes down from his face. He knew her well, and because of it, she knew that he understood her to have thought of Dariel. Dariel had been at that attempt at negotiation. Whatever went wrong happened to him, before his eyes, perhaps to his body.

Drumming his fingertips on the stone balustrade, Melio resumed. “Anyway, it’s a sound plan. About Teh, I mean. The Numrek are here already. They are our enemy again. There’s really nothing but for us to destroy them. The Elite should be a part of it. As their captain I—”

“She’s punishing me for not taking better care of Aaden,” Mena said.

“No, she’s not. Don’t say that. You know your sister,” he began, but then waved that away and began again. “You know how she functions. She is wrapped up in details. Those come first. I doubt very much, Mena, that she thinks any ill of you. She’s just not one to remember small things like feelings.”

For the first time, she sipped the lemon liqueur. Sipped it once, and then tilted it back and poured the entire drink down her throat. Wiping her mouth with her hand, she spoke as if she had not heard Melio at all. “She thinks I allowed Aaden to be stabbed. And she’s right. I did. I watched it happen.”

“Stop, Mena!” He set his glass down and turned her to face him, with a hand at her shoulder that then slid up to cradle her head and neck. “I’m only going to say this one more time. Nobody blames you. Not even Corinn. She may think she does. She may even act on it, but in truth she blames herself. It’s she who made the Numrek her personal guards. It’s she who put her son’s safety in the hands of brute enemies. Tell me you didn’t always know that it was wrong to think them our allies. They ate human flesh! What was she thinking, trusting them? She was thinking about how much she liked it that her guards put the fear of death in everyone else. She liked it that she was different and didn’t have to call on anybody, even her family, for protection. Don’t pull away. You know what I say is true. She knows it as well. But you, Mena, kept Aaden alive. Corinn knows that, too. Don’t expect her to thank you for it anytime soon, but she knows it deep down.”

Melio drew his hand away from her neck but only so that he could use both his hands to grasp hers. “Now, there’s something else we should talk about.”

“No.” She knew exactly what it was. She knew because she had been thinking about it, too. He had been patient, and she had known that in the joyful times after he had arrived back on the island and Elya was working her magic, he had been on the verge of opening the topic again. If he had asked a few days ago, she would have agreed. Things were different now.