Elise arrived on a gray afternoon with her father's guard and a posture that said she had decided how this was going to go.She was thin. Thinner than Wren remembered, and Wren had not seen her in months—the last time had been the night of the attack on Black Hollow, when Elise had been standing in the great hall with the expression of someone whose careful cruelty was being interrupted. That Elise had been composed, polished, the product of an upbringing that had made a weapon of her beauty and her status.This Elise was holding herself together by the specific and visible effort of a person who was not going to show fear in front of people she had wronged.Wren recognized that. She had done it herself for years.They stood in the entrance hall—Wren, Cain, Thorne at a distance, and Elise with one of her father's wolves at her shoulder. The two women looked at each other. The history between them was fully present in the air: the cruelty, the betrayal, the night
Read more