Adrien still stood there, his feet as if nailed to the floor, his words as if nailed to his tongue, while he was torn apart alive by what he had just done - and he chose to pose no resistance. How could he have not seen it before? This, too, was treason - once again, he had turned Val into imagination, a perfect doll who would smile and comply and give him anything he asked for, whether pleasure or pain, but still always bent to his design. What were they to each other? Molded by Adrien's failures, they were the dreamer and the dreamed - one always generated by the other, one alive and the other lifeless. And what could a dreamer offer to its dream? Nothing but selfishness, over and over. And even this dim insight had come too late: now he had truly and finally destroyed everything he had, undeserved as it had always been.

"I cannot offer an apology, and I cannot ask for forgiveness", Adrien tonelessly said.