EMBER’S POV

“Never. Not once. Not his name, not his bloodline, not where he was from. Just that the affair was brief and that whatever he was connected to scared her badly enough to disappear.”

“What did you do? When she told you.”

Maurice’s face changes.

“I lost my mind.” He says it plainly. “I put my fist through the kitchen wall. That wall, right there.” He nods toward a patch near the doorway where the paint doesn’t quite match the rest. “Then I got in the car and drove to every bar in a thirty-mile radius and drank until they stopped serving me. Then I drove home and drank...