"—I love you," Myfanwy said.

The girl lounging against the railing beside her turned her head. A gust of briny ocean wind whipped tresses of long blonde hair around a heart-shaped face as the girl's mouth slipped into an achingly familiar grin.

"Love you too, babes," Elinor replied.

Those words shouldn't have made Myfanwy's stomach lurch as hard as they did. Worse, she should have been able to say what it was her stomach was lurching with—been able to say for sure that it was only anger and hurt making her breathing quicken and her heart race, without a trace of longing. Desire. Love.

Myfanwy turned away and gripped the railing, gazing out across the boat-studded waters of the Iliac Bay. They were at one of their favourite haunts, the disused old lighthouse on Fisherman's Isle. Officially it was too dangerous to allow visitors, the light long since dark, the stonework crumbling and the iron rusting, but Elinor had never much cared about where she was and wasn't allowed, what she was and wasn't supposed to do.

"Really? You love me?" Myfanwy said softly. "You've got a funny way of showing it."

"Oh, don't be like that. We both knew things would change when we left for school in different provinces."

"Did we?" Myfanwy said, rounding on her. "Because the last thing I remember you saying on the matter was that you'd miss me. That you loved me. That you'd write. Do you remember, Ellie? Do you remember what you promised?"

Elinor shrugged. "Like I said, Myf. Things changed."

"You changed."

"So did you. Love the hair, by the way." She reached out, and Myfanwy flinched back.

"Don't."

"Got it. Sorry."

Myfanwy blinked furiously at the sparkling water far beneath their feet. She felt like she should have been crying, but her eyes were hot and dry.

"Why, Ellie?" she whispered. "Why didn't you write? Why didn't you tell me? About…about…"

"Olivia?"

Myfanwy looked away. After a moment, Elinor leaned against the railing beside her. "I wanted to. But it was so hard, you know? I didn't want to hurt you. You were already having such a shit time, and I…" She ran a hand through her hair. It caught the afternoon sunlight, shining like spun gold. "…I didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, this hurt me a lot worse."

"Yeah. I guess." She grimaced. "I'm sorry."

The silence between them was loud and heavy. Myfanwy didn't know what to say—or rather, there were too many things she wanted to say, all swirling around her head in a great tempest. Then suddenly the trapdoor they'd come through to the upper landing of the lighthouse gave a big clang.

"Don't worry," Elinor said, as Myfanwy jumped, barking her shin against the guardrail. "I locked it. It's probably just the Jenkins kids. They can wait their turn."

"You should've told me," Myfanwy said in a rush, the words tripping over each other. "You owed it to me."

"Maybe. Does anyone owe anyone anything? Is anyone obligated to tell anyone anything they're not ready to share? Livvie is mine, Myf, not yours. She's a part of my life. It sucks that I hurt you, but you weren't entitled to know about her before I wanted to tell you."

"That's absolute rubbish," Myfanwy snarled. "What about when it's something which, like you replacing me, affects me too? Just because it's something I don't know, doesn't make it something that I don't have a right to know!"

"You didn't tell me about your new girl straight away, either. And what about the secret you're keeping from that friend of yours—Onmund, right?"

"That's not the same!"

"Isn't it?" Elinor commented lightly. Her next words were drowned out by a sequence of emphatic clangs from the trapdoor. "Just a minute," she shouted over her shoulder. She turned back to Myfanwy. "Whatever happened to patience being a virtue of the Divines, hey?"

Myfanwy stared stonily back, her arms folded.

"In any case," Elinor continued, "from where I'm standing, your house looks far too transparent and easily shatterable for you to be throwing rocks. But that's just my opinion."

Myfanwy's eyes burned with the unshed tears she refused to let Elinor see. She thought she was past all this. She was happy with Brelyna. She loved Brelyna. Elinor shouldn't have been able to affect her like this any more.

"I trusted you," she said. She hated the wobble in her voice. "Completely. I thought you'd never hurt me."

"Everyone can hurt you, Myf. And probably will, eventually, if you let them close enough."

Myfanwy blinked once. Then she turned sharply from the view over the water and strode to the trapdoor, which by the sound of it was now being battered at non-stop. She held out her hand to Elinor. "Give me the key. I'm done here. Done with you."

Elinor's clear peals of laughter mingled with the cries of the seabirds overhead. She held up a big brass key. "You never learn, do you, Myf? I'm not just going to give it to you. You have to—"