EMBER’S POV
She looks at me across the table, dead-eyed, beaten down to the bone, and she does not hide a single bit of her resentment.
“Yes, Ember. You. You were the pregnancy that got me caught. You were the thing that cost me the palace and the expensive silk and the man I loved and the only happiness I was ever given. You ruined my entire life by the simple act of beginning to exist, and I have never once in my years been able to look at your face without seeing everything I lost. So when you ask me why I could never love you the way a mother’s meant to—there. There’s your answer. You were my new grave. My new permanent mountain. Tell me how a woman learns to love her own captor.”
“I was your child!” I spit, the words tearing out of my throat before I can stop them. I slam my hands
