She told him to regret nothing, but he did. If she understood what her request had caused in him, what it had brought out of him and buried in him all at the same time, would she have been so cavalier in dismissing it? Akheron wished he could answer that question. She wasn't really cavalier. That was the answer. But he could feel her pain now, leeching into him just as his hate was sliding into her. Until neither of them was sure by any stretch of the imagination which emotion belonged to which of them, and whether or not both of them might presently be destroyed by the combination of forces too powerful to resist. Akheron hated her for being so beautiful, for feeding him and stealing from him all in the same breath. He hated her for being lovely enough to capture his heart and wicked enough to keep it.
She was going to step on it.
She was going to crush it.
He was turning into Moros.
"If I regret something, I regret it," Akheron finally told her soberly. "I regret it because it's... I made the wrong choice. I haven't made a 'right' choice in a long time. I'm not even sure what the right choice looks like. I knew I was never going to apologize for stabbing anyone, for maiming them, for torturing them... only to you, for you. Even if it makes no difference in how you feel about me, I had to say it, or I couldn't even do this."
His hand felt sleepy on her stomach, gentle but awakening as the rest of him was to the animal that she brought out in him. It was that animal that had struck her, over and over again. For loving him. For not loving him enough. For being there, all the time, in his waking visions where he couldn't escape. He felt as though he were trapped in another of them right now. This very instant staring at a construct of his mind and waiting for it to love him, to kiss his neck and take possession of him as he would take possession of it. She wasn't an it. She was there, right there. He could feel that hard knot of muscles, and beneath it a hard knot of pain. They would never talk about her pain.
Never.
But they didn't have to.
The sudden and unexpected comprehension of intimacy between them was stagger. And he couldn't stop himself, even in his condition, from kissing her neck. Her chin. There was no worship in his kiss, and no desperation; the animal he'd expected to find was not there. Instead there was only a deep and unyielding... knot.