EVELYN’S POV
I spent most of my life believing emotions could be dissected.
Every reaction had a catalyst. Every attachment had a chemical explanation. Every irrational impulse could, with enough observation, be reduced to something measurable.
It was how Catherine raised me.
Standing on that shattered ridge, surrounded by blood and fractured earth beneath a sky that looked almost offensively beautiful after everything it had witnessed, I realized there were still things in this world no amount of study could prepare me for.
Because nothing inside me made sense anymore.
Lucian remained where he had collapsed, shoulders bowed, every breath seeming to scrape painfully out of his chest.
He looked...broken.
Broken in the way old cathedrals were after surviving centuries of storms, still standing only because they had forgotten how to fall.
I hated that image the moment it entered my mind.
No, not the image—the emotions it elicited. The way my heart ached for him.
