Veil Of Shadows. Jennifer Armintrout

slaughtered.”

      Her mouth was thick, as though the moisture there had fled to become the tears that filled her eyes. “If you had not come to me, would you—”

      “No!” He threw the word down like a gauntlet. “You cannot blame yourself for their deaths. You cannot involve yourself in it, and do not play at it as though you could possibly share my pain!”

      She squeezed her eyes shut, let a tear fall. Not because she believed she had any connection, no matter how superficial, to his tragedy, but because in her connection to him his hurt was too much to bear witness to.

      “Anyway,” he began, softer now, “it was too late. They had been dead for some time.”