EMBER’S POV

Then she is gone, and the room lets its breath out, and I realize my hand is shaking around the fork.

Knox takes it. The fork, then the hand. Pries my fingers open gently and folds them up in his.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Low. Just for me. “She’s— she was always strange. Lonely kid, strange grown woman, in and out of this house her whole life with no one to tell her how to be around people. I didn’t think she’d—” He stops. His jaw works. “I should have warned you. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” It isn’t fine. My skin still feels wrong where...