Those that say parting is the sweetest sorrow are wrong; parting is a gift when reunions bring only disappointment. I liked you better when you were gone.

Penelo was beginning to think that maybe it was her lot in life to be the girl who doesn't know what is going on, or why it is happening to her, or even, what she is doing slap bang in the middle of things to begin with.

Perhaps it was also her lot in life to be forever losing people too.

She didn't know where she was, Vaan, Filo and Kytes were gone, and she had only Llyud at her side. This was not to say that the Aegyl was bad company but he was not much for conversation and his every utterance verged on the cryptic or morose. To make matters worse Penelo didn't think they were in Lemures anymore; in fact she didn't think they were anywhere that mortals were supposed to tread.

All of this came together to confound Penelo; her heart twisted into knots inside her chest when she so much as tried to contemplate existence without Vaan; it just did not seem conceivable to her that she would be able to go on without the one constant in her life. It had always been she and Vaan and Penelo did not want to live to see the day when it wasn't.

It wasn't so much love as need; without Vaan Penelo would never have left Rabanastre, never have become the person she was now, and she was not sure she would grow into the person she would be tomorrow if tomorrow did not have Vaan within it.

If Vaan was dead, if Kytes and Filo were lost forever too, Penelo would have nothing left to live for...and it would all be Balthier's fault.

As she and Llyud trekked through the strange, glowing, crystalline forest calling out for their missing friends (or Penelo called and Llyud sort of hovered a few feet off the ground, large red wings whipping the still, sterile air into eddies of eldritch light) Penelo could feel a seething anger, akin to betrayal, heat her bloodstream.

From the very first moment they had been reunited with Balthier and Fran in the ruins of Bervenia it was as if they were meeting strangers; Fran was as warm as she knew how, Penelo would concede, but the Viera was not one for public shows of affection and as for Balthier, well, she might as well have been meeting him for the first time, without even being granted the loan of a handkerchief to mark the occasion.

After the Bervenia temple had all but collapsed in on itself and cost Vaan his airship (or not even his airship – there would be all manner of unpleasantness when the true owner of that airship found out the vessel had been crushed under a rockslide) Balthier and Fran had dropped them off in Rabanastre with nary a word and, as they found out later, disappeared off to Lemures.

To think, when she had found out that Balthier had been felled by Shiva when facing the Judge of Wings, Penelo had been afraid for him...only for Balthier to return and turn on them all. He had raised his gun to Vaan, attacked them, and destroyed the Aegyl auralith as if he was no better than any of those other, mercenary, sky pirates.

So caught up in her furious musings, was Penelo, that she tripped on a rock formation and would have fallen flat on her face if Llyud had not reached out an arm to catch her.

Righting her balance and gripping her mage staff tightly in both hands, she tried to banish thoughts of the traitor from her mind. Vaan was her priority. She needed to make sure Kytes and Filo were safe; they were only children and should not have to face this sort of danger.

And yet, and yet, as she traipsed through this strange twilight realm where everything was drenched in dreamlike, oil painting colours, and the air tasted faintly sweet but dry in her mouth, all Penelo could think on was Balthier.

So many questions and so little listening!

There had been something so blasé, so gleefully indifferent, about him that the 'leading man' had seemed like a brittle, over-wrought caricature of himself. Never once when he had been patronising Vaan and edging ever closer to the auralith had he looked any of them in the eye.

Penelo remembered thinking, as she watched Fran shake her head and walk away from them to stand with Balthier with visible reluctance that she could scarce believe this was the same man capable of painting such beautiful pictures; would she ever understand him, and why, after all this did she even want too?

The strange vapours of this odd, unsettlingly still place seemed to whisper to her with Balthier's voice as it played with the loose tendrils of her hair that had come free of her twin braids. That inhume and unnatural breeze almost seemed to be mocking her with Balthier's low, melodious, chuckle.

Did you think you meant anything to me, my dear? Did you think a simpleton like you could ever be anything other than a momentary fancy? I told you, once you interested me no longer, I would be done with you.

She did not know why, and really it made no sense, but Penelo felt absolutely and completely wretched inside. She wanted to tell herself it was for Vaan, Kytes, and Filo, and the gods only knew she was worried sick for them, but it was also for her, as well.

Her heart hurt for her own pride and she burned with self-recrimination because she had deceived and lied to herself all along. She had believed that she could matter; she had believed that she, simple, uncomplicated Penelo of Low Town, had something of value inside her that would be worth the time of a man like Balthier.

It was only then, as the humid, teasingly soft vapours and glowing dust of this quiet, still, frightening place, stroked over her body like the long, clever fingers of a man who had never cared anything at all for her except for her face (and even then not for long) that she had made the mistake of a half score and a dozen girls before her:

She'd fallen halfway in love with a sky pirate.

Don't speak to me in riddles and do not waste breath on verse; I like not your answers so I shall hear them none.

It was exceedingly odd to be back in Ivalice (or at least floating above it) but it was stranger still to be in the company of Basch (she had complimented him on the beard and new haircut and the man had blushed; she hugged him then and had been gratified to get an awkward pat on the back in return), Ashe, and even dear sweet Larsa again.

So much had happened, but it was as if time had reversed in on itself, so much had happened, and yet here they all were again. The only thing that convinced Penelo that she had not dreamed the last year was the presence of Filo, Kytes, Tomaj and all the Aegyl aboard their airship.

Well perhaps that was not strictly true; they were all here in the flesh but one person, at least, did not seem to be here in spirit.

Penelo found the time to tackle the problem head on (because she did not know how else to do it; she was not a wordsmith, nor gifted with diplomatic guile, and she was too worried to try and affect subtlety) when Vaan was pre-occupied with having a new weapon forged in the saloon and Ashe, Basch, Larsa and some of the friendlier Aegyl, were discussing what to do next.

Not bothering to hide her intentions Penelo left her last culinary failure crackling and melding itself to the blackened frying pan and walked over to Fran. The Viera was even less verbose than she had been a year ago, and Penelo, who tried hard to make friends with the woman twelve months ago, suspected she knew why.

'Fran,'

The Viera turned slowly from her contemplation of the large statue of the Vieran goddess of fertility that, for some reason, stood sentry over the entire saloon area of the airship, to meet Penelo's eyes.

'What's wrong with him, Fran?'

Fran did not much appreciate ambiguity in others, although her own speech was riddled with elusive comments and abstract possibilities, and so Penelo simply asked from the heart that which she thought, no, that which she felt entitled to know.

I am far too fond of you, my dear, to ruin such a friendship.

He had told her that night in his cabin, when confused and scared, Penelo had been willing, eager perhaps, to throw herself at him and his lust if it meant she did not have to weather the night alone. When she could not, Balthier had guarded her chastity and her virtue – he had been a friend to her - and she could not believe that he could throw all that away in twelve short months.

Fran, to her credit, and perhaps in a strange way as a mark of respect to Penelo, did not feign to misunderstand her. She shrugged one elegant shoulder, reddish eyes cool, remote, but just vaguely troubled.

'If you would know then to him you must address yourself; all I say is but whispers of possibility, no better than lies. He holds the only truth, but doubt I do that he will grant it to you.'

Penelo twisted her hands together before her, feeling underdressed and ill-prepared in her grey sleeveless top and loose flowing red trousers; the out-fit of a dancer, or a silly girl, but she had little else to wear save full armour.

'He painted me; during the anniversary of the liberation. Did you know?'

Fran nodded, those red eyes gazing at her with the level, placid steadiness of the stars in the sky, 'The first and last time he has put pen to paper or brush to canvas since Bahamut fell; hoped I did that he returned to his better spirits, but those hopes crested too soon it seems.'

Penelo frowned. Balthier had not painted at all in the year he and Fran had been missing? Once again Penelo wondered just what had happened to the sky pirates during those months. Looking into Fran's remote and quiet eyes Penelo knew for certain that her only chance of finding out was to face Balthier.

'Where is he?'

Fran's right ear twitched, 'Alone; 'tis the norm. Once he would draw and the solitude would serve purpose. Now his pen is stilled and he wraps himself in solitude to ponder what, I dare not say.' A low sigh escaped Fran, the only outward sign she gave of either concern or disapproval, 'The observation deck is his favoured haunt.'

Without another word Fran rocked smoothly into motion past Penelo and sauntered with the sedate, easy, walk of someone who has seen much and lived long and knew that time was still on her side, out of the saloon.

Penelo untwisted her joined hands, wiped her sweaty palms on her trouser legs, checked to make sure all those who might miss her were either asleep or pre-occupied with other things, and left the saloon.

As she made her way up the steps and out onto the open observation deck, the night air carrying a chill for being so high above the Dalmascan desert. Penelo's heart was skipping in the cradle of her chest. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her arms, before realising how weak and foolish this made her seem and forcing herself to walk out onto the deck with head high and back straight.

At first she did not see him. The yellowed moon was both enormous and oddly bulbous and sickly in the clear, cloudless night sky. A million tiny, distant, stars in smudges and half swirls crowded and marred that perfect, thin veil of blackness as Penelo scanned the deck for some sign of the pirate.

A rush of frustrated adrenaline hit her system and left her body in a tiring flush as she realised that Fran must have been wrong, or else Balthier had cannily managed to pass her on his way back into the ship as she was coming out to confront him. She would not put it past him to engineer such a thing, after all, not so long ago he'd made her believe him a traitor when it turned out he'd been right all along.

Feeling just a little relieved that she would not be facing him after all (it was not as if she had any idea of what she would say to him) Penelo walked over to the railings and looked down at the shadow-hewn patchwork of pale lavender and bruised grey dunes and clefts that made up the Giza plains far, far below her.

The slightest scuff of a soft-soled shoe against metal alerted her to the fact that she was not alone after all but she had no time to react before a bored, erudite drawling voice curled like smoke and velvet fur about her chilled shoulders, raising goose-bumps over her exposed flesh.

'Do you mind? You are ruining my view.'

There are those who watch and those that do and then there are those who don't and those who won't; I would sooner walk my own path. Do or die, I will decide.

Penelo took a quick breath before turning about slowly and looking up at the roof of the engine hub where Balthier lounged, as graceful and at ease in such a precarious perch as one of the winged Aegyl would be. He was spot-lit by the jaundiced moonlight, as if the whole night was just a backdrop to his insouciant performance.

With one leg raised and knee bent and the other leg draped over the edge, he had hooked one arm about his drawn up knee and the hand of the other curled about a half-empty bottle of some manner of spirit. When Penelo just continued to stare up at him, Balthier hissed with irritation and waved the hand not holding the bottle at her in the way he might bat away an insect.

'Did you not hear me? I said you are in my way.'

Penelo bridled a little at that treatment, but then narrowed her eyes speculatively, 'I don't see a sketch pad, or a pen. How can I be in your way when you are not doing anything?'

He gave her a look that might have been called black except he did not seem to deem her worthy of the effort such a look would entail. He raised one hand to the side of his head lazily, 'I am composing a painting in my mind's eye; not that I have to explain myself to you.'

That Balthier was, if not drunk, then certainly a good few shades past sober, was not in question and it did not bother Penelo much. It might even give her an advantage; the few times Balthier had allowed himself to drink freely while they all shared company twelve months ago, she had found that he was given to being sweeter tempered and far more generous after a few drinks, than he ever was stone cold sober.

'You do actually, seeing as how you are a guest on Vaan's airship and I'm his partner.' she pointed out boldly, even as her heart tripped wildly in her chest. Balthier quirked one eyebrow at her and then shook his head and reclined back onto his elbows, tilting his head up to the stars.

'Well then, by all means continue to stand there. I would not wish to offend such gracious hosts.'

The playfulness of jesting with Balthier left her oddly cold and something twisted in her stomach, 'But you don't have any trouble in using us.'

She sucked in her a sharp breath as her fists clenched at her side, 'Balthier how could you? How could you raise your gun to Vaan? He admires you so much and that's how you treat him?'

Balthier, almost completely horizontal across the metal roof of the engine hub, sighed, 'And here we go, more bloody complications.'

'Don't you have anything to say; don't you care at all?'

Penelo moved across the observation deck and reached out to hook her fingers on the edge of the engine hub roof. It was not elegant and it was not graceful but using the honed strength in her upper arms and kicking with her legs Penelo began to haul herself up onto the roof beside him.

Two strong hands grasped her around the elbows as she wriggled and struggled to pull herself up. 'What are you doing, my girl? You'll slice yourself all to bloody ribbons if you are not careful.'

With Balthier's help Penelo found herself solidly on the hub roof with his arms around her. For a moment the feel of cotton against her bare arms and the heat of his long-fingered hand splayed across her back brought back delicious tactile memory of the last time she had been alone with him, and then she regained her senses and roughly shook his hands off her.

'Hmm, my keen deductive reasoning suggests you are upset with me.'

Balthier murmured lips twitching in a smirk as he shifted on the hub roof so that he could face her but also so that no part of his body made contact with hers. He rested the unlabelled bottle on his drawn up knee and watched her with shrewd amusement.

'I am angry,' she snapped holding her arms tightly across her chest as the chill starlight shivered over her skin, 'Vaan believed in you. He believed in the 'leading man' and you deliberately let him think you had turned bad. How can you be so unfeeling?'

Balthier's heavy-lidded eyes regarded her from a lofty cynical distance, 'Vaan should learn not to put his faith in false idols; I did the boy a favour. A man who puts his faith in his fellow man is worse than a fool. In fact he is nothing better than a tool.'

Penelo could feel her teeth grinding together and she raised her fist to her mouth to keep her furious words tightly locked away behind her lips. She almost itched to punch him in the nose.

'You're right,' the words forced their way through her clenched teeth, 'Vaan is a better leading man than you ever were.'

She wanted to hurt him because she was tired of giving him the opportunity to hurt her. She wriggled her way to the edge of the hub roof ledge intending to drop down and return to the warmth and friendly company within the ship. There was little for her out here, evidently.

Before she could jump down Balthier's hand curled and fastened about her forearm, 'Sticks and stones, my dear, I wonder when you are going to have the courage to stand by your own convictions and not hide behind your precious Vaan, hmm?'

She turned to him sharply, 'Let go.'

A lazy smile quirked his lips and he abruptly jerked her off balance towards him via the grip he had on her forearm. As Penelo tried to push away from the radiating body heat she could feel within the circle of his arms, Balthier began to briskly rub his hands over her chilled forearms.

'You Rabanastrans seem to make a habit of dressing in inappropriate attire for the environment, don't you? Or perhaps you simply want to experience the novelty of contracting hypothermia in the desert?'

Penelo did not say a word; she simply could not. The feel of Balthier's hands on her bare limbs was not a sensuous touch, nor romantic. Instead it was brisk, practical, and the friction of his palms against her arms brought warmth and feeling back to her cold skin in tingling waves.

'My, my you are sprung taut, aren't you? Whatever could the matter be, hmm?'

Penelo still said nothing, the mocking melody of Balthier's words rolling about her head like thick, sweet nectar as under the efficient brush of his hands Penelo began to feel like a flower being coaxed into open bloom. Or perhaps some manner of ripened fruit hanging on a vine; she felt swollen and full under her skin and fit to burst. It was hard to remember she was angry with him when all she wanted to do was press her head against his shoulder and lean into the warmth she could feel raising from his body.

'Why didn't you just tell us about the Anima and the auralith; why didn't you trust us to help you, Balthier?'

She finally managed to formulate the question as her skin became warm and soft and almost painfully sensitive under the run of his hands, which had become less brisk and slowed into something more like a rhythmic caress.

Balthier did not immediately answer with words but instead positioned her body so that she had her back to him and sat within the cradle of his legs, almost, as he began to stroke his warm hands over shoulders and upper back.

'Firstly, I trust no one save Fran, and secondly, explanations take too long and engender far too many inconvenient questions. It was more expedient to simply send you to the Yahri and let you work it out yourselves. Of course, considering how long you were gone, it might have been faster to simply sit you down and draw you all a diagram.'

Penelo felt a little like a couerl under the sun as her flesh flexed under the run of his hands; she wanted to stretch out and start purring and had to bite her tongue to stop herself from doing so. Penelo could feel her eyes fluttering shut as she leaned her weight back against Balthier's strong hands.

'That doesn't explain anything,' she roused herself before she lost all self-respect and curled up and fell asleep against that leather-vested chest.

'That's just an excuse. It doesn't explain why you're letting Vaan take the lead. You even called him leading man and made sure that Ashe and Basch talk to him when they'd more naturally talk to you. If you thought he was too dumb to understand what was going on, why let him be the leader?'

She really had to remember that she couldn't trust Balthier as far as she could throw him; just because he was being sweet now did not mean he wouldn't be an absolute swine when the sun rose tomorrow. She could not afford to be distracted and she was not so naïve that she didn't realise that that was what he was trying to do.

Balthier abruptly grasped her around the waist and tugged her backward the last inch and half or so, so that she ended up with her back against his chest and her legs fenced in by his much longer ones. Her cheeks blazed with raw, volcanic heat as certain parts of her anatomy came into contact with certain parts of his and she realised that she was essentially trapped and encircled by Balthier's body.

He chuckled and pushed her forward a little (manipulating her with the ease of one pushing and prodding a rag-doll) so he could begin to work out the kinks caused by long combat and worry that had knotted the muscles of her shoulders and the back of her neck.

'Some might say I am ensuring my reputation remains unblemished by allowing Vaan to take central role in this debacle. The leading man in any drama is ultimately responsible for the out-come; I don't foresee a happy ending therefore shall let Vaan take the rap.'

'Hummmm?'

Penelo flushed even further when she realised that not only had she barely heard a word Balthier had just said but that she had also forgotten the question and the purpose of their conversation.

Balthier chuckled again and the sound rumbled through his chest and rippled through her; Penelo had the near overwhelming urge to wriggle in his arms and tensed up to maintain some semblance of self-control.

'Tsk-tsk, no sooner do I have you loosened up, my girl, then you clam up again. You'll be dead before you reach twenty if you do not allow yourself to relax.'

Penelo was fighting a battle with her brain, her body, and the strange tingling, twanging feeling in her abdomen. Her brain was trying to wad through a swamp of soft, warm, languid pleasure and hold onto her questions and suspicions while her body wanted to melt like candle wax and dribble to the floor in a happy puddle, and the liquid heat in her abdomen throbbed persistently with an entirely different kind of want.

'Balthier?' Penelo bowed her spine, the crown of her head touching his shoulder as she tried to pull away from him but ended up simply filling his arms all the more.

'Hmm?'

His breath tickled her ear and his hands slipped from the relatively innocuous flesh of her shoulders to her waist where his fingers fanned over the exposed skin of her mid-rift between her bustier top and her hip-hugging trousers. Somewhere and somehow the purpose and intent of this conversation had escaped the both of them.

'Balthier…..what's happened to you?' she bit her lip as his hands curved over her belly and one finger skirted the edge of her navel making things low in her stomach twang like loose elastic.

Penelo was not sure if she rose up on her knees to escape him or to offer up more of her body – blood was pounding in her ears and she felt light headed as if she had been sipping from Balthier's forgotten bottle of boot-leg spirit all night long.

Balthier let his hands smooth up her sides, a caress that had just an edge of fierceness to it as he brushed over her rib cage and his fingertips threatened to dive up and under the edge of her top. He pressed his lips to the back of her neck, 'I think the more pressing matter is not what has happened, but what is happening now and what, if anything, we should do about it.'

Penelo went still under his hands and suddenly she became aware of the chill moonlit night air once more. It hit her hot, flushed, face like a cold slap and she sucked in a sharp breath. Balthier's hands grew still and they both seemed to hold themselves very, very quiet for a moment.

'Balthier?'

She was suddenly almost afraid as she felt him shifting back from her and the absence of his heat left her cold and exposed to the elements. In fact she suddenly felt like a hot house flower abandoned in the frozen wastes of Paramina. Frost and loneliness would wither her to mush and pulp in seconds she was sure. Every particle of skin on her body ached to feel his hands on her again.

She tried to shift around to face him, turning from the leering face of the moon almost helplessly.

'No,' Balthier's sharpness stopped her in her tracks. 'Stay facing that way. I think it will be safer all round.'

He sighed and she could almost imagine his eyelids falling down to mask his eyes and guard his expression; she could feel him pulling away from her. She thought she heard him mutter something along the lines of: 'Bloody marvellous, this would be so much simpler were I sober.'

'What do you mean safer?' she whispered not feeling remotely safe kneeing before the yellow, ancient moon with him at her back, so near and yet retreating so very fast.

His sigh slithered over her like a cloak of black silk, 'Penelo this cannot go on.'

Tears prickled her eyelids and she shook her head hard enough to make her braids lash against her shoulders, 'I don't understand.'

He scoffed derisively, 'Now, now, my girl, let's not be coquettish, you know what I am talking about and I think you know precisely what I mean; you are in love with your stalwart brave childhood sweetheart but you cavort with me. Can you not see the conflict here?'

'Vaan?'

The name conjured the face and Vaan's lazy, vaguely vacuous grin and bright open expression jarred in her mind. Vaan did not belong in this crisp, cool night high above the ground under the all-knowing moonlight and the velvet shadows. He was a creature of light and simplicity and belonged to the sunlight and the days of adventure. She could not understand why Balthier would speak of him now.

'Hmm, well done, my dear, you remember his name. Now, tell me how do you suppose he would react if he had seen the two of us but moments ago?'

Penelo whipped her head around to stare at Balthier with wide eyes and sharp in-drawn breath. He smiled at her crookedly. Her heart twisted painfully as her stomach roiled with acidic guilt.

'Hm, yes, the Gil drops at last.' Balthier rose to his feet and swept an arm downward to catch up his bottle before he dropped easily down off the roof of the hub without spilling a drop of his liquor.

'Adultery is a fine pastime, Darling, and I can well appreciate your frustrations; your chosen beloved has yet to experience puberty it seems, but I warn you, I'll not be tagged with the blame when you realise a little slap and tickle is not worth the heartache.'

I have never feared the liars and the cheats, I understand their rules and know their fears; it is the truth and its vagaries that leave me cold.

Penelo rose shakily to her feet. She did not know how to feel; relief, sick alarm, and crushing disappointment, warred with the throbbing, burning ache in her abdomen as she watched him move towards the door to the airship's interior.

'A little slap and tickle…..that's all this was?'

Balthier turned back to her and opened his arms from his body giving her an ironic bow, 'Indeed. You should thank me for my restraint, dearest, my appetites run to more adult stimulations and I do not like to be persistently denied that final satisfaction. I won't play these adolescent games a moment longer.'

Penelo could only stare at him as her cheeks drenched in heated blood and shame. Her hands clenched even as her nervous system still tingled with the memory of his hands on her. 'W-who said I'm playing?'

The words were out before she could do a thing about it but as soon as they sounded on the air she found that she did not mind so terribly much. Balthier watched her calmly from the silver edged shadows.

'Of course you are playing. These trysts are always a game. You gamble pleasure against fidelity and hope that the former is worth the risk; or so I have heard. In truth I've never been the one on your side of the equation.'

Penelo swallowed dryly as Balthier's sharp, closed lipped and sly little smile sliced at her conscience. Balthier had called this, whatever it was that existed between she and he, adultery, but Penelo was not sure he was right.

She loved Vaan, dearly and completely, but she did not belong to him, and as Balthier had rather cruelly alluded to, Vaan did not seem remotely interested in romance……not that she was completely sure that Balthier was offering her that either. In fact she had a feeling what he was, maybe, possibly, offering her would last only one night and be over and done with come the sunrise.

Still, if Balthier's reputation was truly deserved, it would be a night to remember.

'Hmm, nothing to say sweetheart?' he purred rubbing one thumb over the lip of the bottle.

Penelo's eyes gravitated to that movement as he trailed the pad of his thumb over the mouth of the bottle again and again and watched her with those cynical sly eyes from the shadows and grey areas that were so much his home.

The silence held time in check for a count of five heavy heartbeats as Penelo simply stared and Balthier waited, insouciant and indifferent. Was it really just a game to him? A gamble of pleasure versus complication. Did he care a whit if Vaan was hurt or did he only care that he might be blamed for all this?

Penelo stood in the circle of the ivory moon and shivered, arms coming up to rub at her arms as he watched her with veiled and obscure eyes. She could almost feel those eyes ticking over every curve she possessed; he knew them all so well from sketch and touch. She felt naked under those cool, ironic eyes.

After an agonising moment, wherein, if Balthier had spoken or reached for her she would have gone to him, he chuckled blandly.

'Hmm, as I thought; nothing but a little tease.'

He turned on his heel and opened the door leading down to the interior stairs and into the airship. Before he took the first step he turned around once more and raised the bottle up to her in mocking salute,

'By the way, my dear, those tattoos are quite delectable. Wherever did you come by that design?'

Without waiting for her to stutter a reply he jauntily descended the stairs and the hatch door banged closed behind him. Penelo dropped to her knees on the engine hub roof like a marionette with strings cut and shuddered to hold in her tears.

Nothing but a little tease……..but why did she think that he'd lied to her with every honeyed breath; why was it that she thought that it was not contempt but fear that had caused him to once more back away from her?

Penelo found herself wondering, as she looked up at the large and smugly amused yellow moon, was the famous philanderer afraid of the conquest? Did Balthier have more to lose from this 'tryst' than she did, and if so, what?