"Let's go in, Mother," Theron said, forcing a smile into place.
Margrethe slipped her hand through his arm with a bright, almost triumphant smile, and stepped in beside him as though she were entering in his shadow and yet somehow still belonged to the light.
Her son was her pride.
For Theron, however, this was the last place he wanted to stand. The hall ahead was beautiful in the way sacred places were beautiful—vast, gilded, severe. It was the kind of grandeur that did not invite comfort. It demanded surrender.
And he was bound to it, whether he liked it or not.
But Aveline was not.
The thought settled in him with sudden, fierce clarity.
He had selfishly drawn her closer to this world, and now it was his burden to keep her from being crushed beneath it. Her pain returned to him in flashes, and his hands curled into fists at his sides.
