“You shouldn’t have left!” Ashley accused, voice sharp with pain. “You left me alone, and you were gone for so long. If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have died. I wouldn’t have died. You abandoned me.”

He hugs his arms around Ereuvir’s waist, tucking close against his side for comfort and protection, and because he wants Arkady to see that he has someone else to comfort and protect him now, now that Arkady abandoned him, and focusing on the abandonment is a much easier thing to process than Arkady’s appearance. Ashley’s had two years to stew over the pain of abandonment, while the loss of Arkady’s beauty is still a shock. If it were anyone else, Ashley would be intrigued by and even drawn to the deathlike visage, but this change to Ashley’s idealized memory of his brother is something he is unprepared for.