At the title, Hal flinched. His voice, however, was as flat and cold as ever. “And what of you? It’s no secret what happened to you after your mother’s death. Although you managed to escape your exile, you were born into shame and can’t outrun that, no matter how desperately you try.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she spat.

She trembled at the inadequacy of her retort, but fury had left her near speechless. No one besides Isabel had ever so plainly twisted the knife in her greatest insecurity. No one besides Isabel had ever been so intentionally cruel. Without another word, she got up and left.

Across the hall, in the safety of her room, every feeling she’d avoided waited for her in the shadows. Her silent accusers: fear, stress, shame. They crowded in on her until she could see nothing beyond the haze of her own failure. As much as she wanted to be better, to be stronger, Hal had gotten to her.

She slid to the floor in a heap and wept.

CHAPTER TEN

In the cold light of morning, nothing made any more sense than it did the night before.

She’d spent sleepless hours struggling with what had happened last night and what it meant for her. All she had to show for her perseveration now were her bloodshot, swollen eyes. Wren stood before the mirror in the washroom, sighing at her harried reflection. She had a meeting with Lowry in thirty minutes and couldn’t very well attend him looking like this.

It was a careful process, a work of illusion, to transform herself from the red-eyed girl in the mirror into a medical professional. She splashed her face with cold water, dusted her blotchy cheeks with talc, and neatly pinned up her hair. By the end of it, she was armored. Her smile, passably confident, would be enough to convince Lowry nothing was amiss.

She still looked desperate—a little wild in the eyes—but in light of how thoroughly her life had unraveled, Wren was beginning to suspect a little desperation had become a permanent fixture.

Wren turned on the faucet again and began to wash her hands. The hot water—another electrical marvel, apparently—soothed the ache in her joints, and steam coiled upward, silvering the mirror with condensation.