KNOX’S POV
Rayana scoffs.
“As if. My mother would never let Katherine Volkvov wallow. Not in this life and certainly not in whatever comes after.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, graceless and completely unbothered by it. “I’m certain Beatrice and Katherine are still the best of friends. Probably driving everyone on the other side absolutely mad with their scheming. And Alexei—” She pauses, and the gentleness in her voice when she says my father’s name is something I wasn’t prepared for. “He’s there too. Only without the beast. He’s just a man now. A man who loves a woman and they have forever to make up for everything that went wrong in their lifetime.”
I close my eyes and breathe in. The image she’s painted — my father without the monster, my mother without the fear, the
