Phei had not known what to expect from the Goddess and Elena when he finally faced them.
Anger would have been understandable, questions too were inevitable. Tears he could handle, perhaps badly, but he could handle them. What troubled him was the cold emptiness beside his hand, because somewhere inside that empty space his fingers should have been wrapped around a much smaller hand.
Althea's...
He had only met the girl once.
The memory returned with ridiculous clarity now that he allowed himself to look at it properly, carrying him back to that Sunday at the Academy when Althea Ashford had celebrated her birthday surrounded by Legacy families, children, expensive decorations and a magnificent swan sculpted from ice.
Phei remembered the ice swan better than he should have.
Mostly because he had destroyed it.
