EMBER’S POV
And I stare at him, this enormous, scarred rogue who eats crème caramel and threatens kings, and I feel something rip open in my chest, because I know that.
I know that feeling in my bones. I spent years trying to go back to a mother who threw me away because the alternative was having no one at all.
“I’m sorry,” Silas says.
I blink. “What?”
“For how she’s used you.” His dark eyes hold mine, and there’s so much depth in them. “I don’t know the whole of it yet. But I know my sister, and I heard what you said about slapping her, and I know it was ugly, and I know she must have deserved it.” His jaw tightens. “No blood of the Black line deserves to be handled like that. Not by anyone, and least of all by one of our own. You are not a thief’s mistake, girl, whatever she’s let
