ALEX.
I had gone to bed the night before holding onto hope like it was a fragile ornament, one wrong move away from shattering. Niko had promised me he would find a way out. He had looked into my eyes when he said it, his voice low, certain and intimate. I wanted to believe him. I needed to.
So when morning came, I woke up lighter than I had in days, but that feeling didn’t last.
I heard a knock on the door later that morning. I wondered who it must have been, and when the knocking became louder, I went for it, wondering where Edmund was. I smoothed my sweater and opened the door with a polite smile already on my face.
It fell instantly.
The woman standing there looked like she had stepped out of a magazine. Tall, elegant, with glossy dark hair cascading over one shoulder and a smile
