Sumi cupped the girl’s face in her hands. Gods how she wished she didn’t know how easy it was to get sucked into an inescapable nightmare. To feel trapped and lost, and to have no one to help, and no way out. To be so desperate for love that you’d accept insults and blows for any semblance of it.

She still couldn’t believe she’d done it, not once.

Twice.

“Thia, you are headed down a bad path. One I walked before you, and I’m here to tell you that it sucks in ways you can’t imagine. So long as you keep this anger inside, it will infect you. You have to let it go and move on. Life isn’t fair. It’s not supposed to be. It’s just better than being dead.”

“You don’t know.”

“Girl, I do. I know exactly what it’s like to be angry at the gods who put you here. Furious at the ones who were supposed to protect and love you, but instead were focused on their own selfishness and consumed by their own pain to the point they didn’t care what happened to you.” Sumi swallowed. “From what I’ve heard, your father and stepmother sound wonderful. They love you.”

Her lips trembled. “I know. Kiara has always treated me like a blood daughter. But I just want what they have.”

“You do have it, sweetie.”

“No. I have the same demons inside me that my father has, and I know it. I’ve seen humanity for what it is, and I know how tenuous safety can be. How fleeting.” She knelt down and buried her face in Illyse’s fur. “I always feel like an outsider in my own family. And I know it’s not really true, but I can’t stop it. It just hurts to know that I could have been their real daughter, instead of the one they were forced to raise. Sometimes I just want to run for the door and not look back. Ever.”

“Thia —”

“Sumi, it’s not what you’re thinking. I was a teenager when my mother died… brutally. I’d only met my father one time, just hours before it happened. I didn’t know him. At all. He didn’t know me. And he died that night, too, protecting Kiara from my stepfather – who my father killed while rescuing her. In the blink of an eye, everything I knew was gone. Violently ripped away. And suddenly, everyone around me was a complete stranger.”