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....