“Such pessimism.” Paris tsked—hardly the reaction Aeron had expected. “You see it as a century spent losing that which you are unable to protect. I see it as a century spent enjoying a great blessing. A blessing that will aid you the rest of eternity.”

Aid? Absurd. When you lost something precious, the memories of it became a tormenting reminder of what you could never have again. Those memories added to your troubles, distracting you—unlike Paris, he wouldn’t wrap the word in a pretty bow—rather than strengthening you.

Proof: that’s how he felt about Baden, keeper of Distrust and once his best friend. Long ago, he’d lost the man he’d loved more than he would have loved even a blood brother, and now, every time he was alone, he pictured Baden and wondered about what could have been.

He didn’t want that for Paris.

Forget big picture. Time for a little more mercilessness. “If you’re so capable of accepting loss, why do you still mourn Sienna?”

A beam of moonlight hit Paris’s face, and Aeron saw that his eyes were slightly glazed. Obviously, he’d been drinking. Again. “I didn’t have my century with her. I had but a few days.” Flat tone.

Don’t stop now. “And if you had been given a hundred years with her before she died, you would now be at peace with her death?”

There was a pause.

He hadn’t thought so.

“Enough!” Paris slammed a fist into the roof and the entire building shook. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Too bad. “Loss is loss. Weakness is weakness. If we don’t allow ourselves to grow attached to the humans, we won’t care when they leave us. If we harden our hearts, we won’t desire that which we cannot have. Our demons taught us that very well.”

Each of their demons had once lived in hell and desired freedom, and so together they fought their way out. Only, they ended up exchanging one prison for another, and the second had been far worse than the first.