Elias’s Pov

I sat in my office for a long time, my mind on different thoughts. I had lost three of the most important people in my life in what felt like a blink of an eye. My father was gone. Philip was gone. And now, Grandmother was gone too.

The grief was a cold weight in my chest, but the anger was what kept me moving. It was a dark thing that told me I had to become a monster to catch the people who did this. But then I thought of Mara. I thought of the way she had looked at me with a mixture of fear and...