She could see how he wasn't following her — how could he have, when he didn't know the full story? Of course she needed to protect him. To protect him was to protect herself; if anything happened to Ari, Adrienne wouldn't have been able to live with herself, and she knew it was the same for him. As usual, he saw straight through her, though she had never been able to put up much of a wall for Ari. It had never felt natural, and there was never much that she felt the need to hide from him. She certainly didn't intend to start now, but oh how she wished she would be able to.

"Uncle Trystan told me that he didn't think I would receive many opportunities — that he wanted me to consider this because he didn't want me to have as hard a time as Liliana did." She hoped that Ari would catch on, that he might be in a better state of mind than she had; of course she'd just delivered the exact same information their....uncle had just told her - the abridged version.

---