Ryan's betrayal destroys his relationship with Ava

Ryan's betrayal destroys his relationship with Ava, turning a romance marked by affection into one of the most intimate forms of the Coterie’s violence against her. Ryan had once seemed wholly devoted to Ava; by the confrontation at Venus’s island, he stands unharmed behind Venus, waiting for her permission even as Ava arrives to rescue the bound Cade. The later explanation makes the betrayal more complicated, but not less consequential: Ryan’s longing for belonging helps explain his choices without undoing what he did to Ava or the people she loves.

Affection and the First Signs of Betrayal

For Ava, the sight of Ryan beside Venus collapses the distance between romantic memory and present danger. His hazel eyes, once directed entirely toward Ava, are now fixed on Venus, and his hands hover near Venus as if eager to touch her but held back until she allows it. Venus strokes his cheek while Ava watches him shudder with pleasure. The scene presents Ryan not merely as an absent or reluctant accomplice but as someone visibly aligned with the woman who has taken Cade captive.

Ava’s response is divided before she forces it into certainty. Seeing Ryan hurts; she cannot tell whether she is more disgusted by him or by the fact that he still upsets her. She names the feelings that remain—pity, love, jealousy—and tries to burn them away until only anger and hatred are left. That effort matters to the relationship’s ending: Ava does not arrive at the rescue untouched by attachment, but she refuses to let the surviving attachment excuse Ryan or endanger Cade.

The contrast between Ryan’s earlier place in Ava’s life and his position beside Venus makes his betrayal personal as well as tactical. Ava recognizes that Venus might have found another way to arrange events, so she cannot know how much of the larger catastrophe depended on her relationship with Ryan. What she can see is that he is there willingly and unharmed while Cade kneels bound at Venus’s feet. Faced with that immediate evidence, Ava puts Cade’s safety ahead of any argument for protecting Ryan.

What Ryan Reveals After the Island

After the island confrontation, Ava sees Ryan only once after he wakes at Grandma Rose’s, before Sid and Ikka take him home. He is physically wrecked after Venus has held him in thrall for several days: shaky, sick, and sometimes screaming. His appearance has changed, too. Deep bruises sit beneath his eyes, and although someone has brushed his hair and cleaned him, he seems indifferent to the effort. Ava knows he is alive, but that knowledge offers no return to the relationship they had.

When Ava asks why, Ryan first explains a history that helps account for his hunger for a place in the supernatural world. His mother, a Selkie, left him after seeing that he took after his human father; she told him he belonged on land and swam away without apology or tears. Ryan says he wanted what Ava had. His account places his later choices beside an earlier experience of rejection, but the explanation does not make those choices harmless: he sought the Coterie himself, and Venus used his connection to Ava as an opportunity.

Ryan says that he learned of the Coterie from another mixed-heritage child and went to them a couple of months earlier. When he told Venus where he came from, she told him about Ava and what she was. Ryan’s account confirms the purpose behind his approach to Ava: he was supposed to watch her. Ava calls this spying, while Ryan shrugs off the distinction. The exchange strips away the romantic appearance of ordinary closeness and reveals that, at least by then, their relationship had also become a channel for surveillance.

The Betrayal’s Mechanisms

The Inferno episode exposes how Ryan’s assignment changed. He says Venus decided she wanted Ava brought in unprepared. Hoping that giving Venus what she wanted would accelerate his initiation, Ryan agreed to help. When events went wrong, he was tasked with salvaging the plan by getting Ava drunk, making her more compliant, and bringing her back. Ava did not drink and kept trying to leave; Ryan’s answer was to drug her. His explanation ties his ambition to the assault on her agency: the desire to enter the Coterie was his, and so was his decision to help Venus overcome Ava’s refusal.

Ryan’s shooting-star earrings, which Ava asks about during their conversation, are also revealed as part of the scheme. Ryan says the idea came from Brittany, another person with a human parent, and that they thought things would go better if they worked together. The disclosure makes a personal gift into evidence of coordinated deception. The earrings had carried the appearance of affection; learning that they were bugged forces Ava to reread that gesture as part of the surveillance around her.

Ava’s anger is sharpened by the scale of what Ryan’s participation put at risk. She tells him she nearly lost everyone she loves so that he could join the Coterie. Her fire sputters at first because she is still worn thin from Venus, but she grows the flame and makes it hot enough for Ryan to feel from the corner of his bed. She warns him never to come near her or anyone she considers hers again, and threatens to make him understand how human he is. The warning reverses the earlier power dynamic: Ryan had helped make Ava vulnerable and compliant; now she sets the boundary and demonstrates that he cannot presume continued access to her.

No Return to the Old Relationship

Ryan does not answer Ava’s warning. He closes his eyes and turns his face away, and Ava lets the flame go out. She wonders whether he will ever be close to the old Ryan again—or whether that version of him existed only in her understanding. The uncertainty does not soften her judgment. She imagines that his future will be marked by nightmares of fire and blood, and recognizes that Venus has left him changed. Ryan is not simply restored to the person Ava once loved after Venus’s control ends.

Ava leaves Ryan mumbling to himself in Grandma Rose’s bedroom. She does not know whom he is speaking to, but she knows he is not speaking to her, and never will again. Only after reaching the outside does she realize that he never once said he was sorry. The omission gives their final conversation its bleak conclusion: Ryan has explained his rejection, ambition, spying, and complicity, but explanation has not become an apology, and confession has not repaired trust.

The relationship therefore ends not with a recovered romance or a cleanly resolved account of what Ryan once felt, but with Ava accepting that she cannot know whether his earlier affection was genuine. Her final certainty concerns the present: the person she thought she knew is gone from her life, and Ryan will not be close to her or her chosen family again. The lingering hurt and the firm boundary coexist. Ava’s attachment is real enough to make the betrayal painful; it is not a reason to welcome him back.