Magnus had seen many cruel things in his life. As Beta to the Alpha King, he had witnessed battles, executions, and the harsh realities of pack justice, but nothing had prepared him for the deliberate cruelty he had just witnessed from his best friend.
The calculated way Dorian had used Carina as a weapon to wound his own mate.
He found Willow in an empty corridor two floors down from the ballroom, collapsed against the stone wall with her arms wrapped around herself, sobbing as though her heart had been ripped from her chest. Which, Magnus supposed, it had been.
"Willow," He said softly, approaching her slowly as one might approach a wounded animal.
She looked up at him with those blue eyes swimming in tears, and the devastation he saw there made his own chest ache.
Her face was blotchy from crying, her careful servant's composure completely shattered.
