Disbelief mixes with the devastated hurt on her face as she looks up at him, her chest tightening painfully around her heart. There -- that right there -- that struggle toward truth, she recognizes that. Had that been genuine after all? How much of this is calculated? God, it makes her head hurt.

She wants it all undone. She wants Byerly to retract every stupid, heinous, disgusting statement he's just made about the future of Barrayar and just come back to her, go back to things as they had been before he'd left. She'd been alright with the way things had resolved that night, even if it had come with a little hurt. That had been assuaged. But this -- this, she doesn't know.

"Of course I liked you," she whispers through the tears. "You treated me like a person. You were nice, and you made me laugh, and you -- you made me feel safe. A place I belonged. Someone I could trust. Why befriend me, if you didn't think I would? What did you expect from me?" And then, in a much smaller voice, "Was any of that real? Did you mean any of it at all? Or did you just -- tell me what you thought I wanted to hear?"

It's the question she least wants to ask, but the one she's burning the most to know. She's afraid to ask, because she doesn't know if she can trust his answer, but she's too hurt, too desperate for any small scrap of comfort to cling to.