"That's her," I said, my voice coming out strange, too quiet, like the words themselves didn't want to be spoken out loud. "That's my mother."
Ronan went very still beside me.
"Vera—"
"Don't." I couldn't look away from the photograph, from the careful, guarded expression on a face I'd spent a lifetime trying to remember without help. "You said the Ferrum were a rumor. A story people told before your time. You didn't say she stood in this exact hallway."
"I didn't know," he said, and the raw shock in his voice told me he was telling the truth, whatever else he might have lied about tonight. "I've walked past that photograph a thousand times in my life. I never once—" He stopped himself, jaw tight, staring at the image like it had personally betrayed him. "My father would know. If anyone
