Damon’s POV

Sleep refused to come.

I'd been lying there staring up at my ceiling for hours as the night dragged on outside my window. The fire had long since died down, and there was only the soft crackle of dying embers and the low rumble of the storm outside the walls.

But it was not the storm that kept me awake.

It was her.

Aria's voice. Her trembling hands. The secret she'd harboured for all those years about her brother -- a secret bound in pain and loyalty. It clawed at me, made ...