EMBER’S POV

“Oh, but it was a trophy, Ember.” She looks at me with genuine, baffled frustration, like I’m a slow child failing an obvious sum. “I survived, did I not? That is the only trophy there has ever been. My survival. The world will teach you the way it taught me, and the world is a far crueller tutor than I ever was.”

Not once have the men broken their stunned silence, watching this foul woman gloat over her own atrocities.

She will burn anyone, sacrifice anything, as long as it guarantees her survival.

“They saved your life!” I snap, the disgust finally boiling over into pure rage. I...