In the darkness of their bed, she asks him though it can’t make any difference; power over time is one skill they don’t have, but lying? Ah, that they can do in spades, over and over, to each other’s faces without a single flicker, without flinching, building this thing between them they call a relationship on lie upon lie.

So it is that she laughs when he tells the truth, so raw and unexpected; when he looks at her with one eyebrow raised and says, “No - I’d have killed you that first day, sweetheart,” only smiling in turn when she returns the favor with, “We should have killed each other, then, and been done with it,” before he kisses her with a murmured promise: Next time, Alina.