EMBER’S POV
Devika freezes. Her hands drop from her wet face.
For a long, terrible moment, she just stares at me. And then, right in front of my eyes, the ice finally cracks. The monster dies.
Twenty-six years of survival comes crashing down, and the woman under it caves in.
“Because that’s what he called me,” she whispers. It is the softest, most broken sound I have ever heard her make. “Rhovan. When it was just the two of us, in the dark. When I was the only thing in the world he wanted. He’d take my face in his hands and he’d call me his spark in the dark. His ember. The little fire that kept catching no matter how the world tried to put it out.”
Devika reaches across the black table.
Her hand is trembling violently, her knuckles white. And when her cold, shaking fingers gently cu
