Dravina POV

Malrik stood there, tension carved into every line of his face his silence a mix of shock and something dangerously close to regret. He hadn’t expected me to find out, clearly. But I wasn’t the woman who stayed quiet anymore. Those days, those versions of me molded by fear and silence had been buried with everything Cassian had once tried to suppress.

I’d learned the hard way that pretending things were fine only delayed the inevitable. I no longer had the stomach for ...