Flashback ( PDFDrive )

me break down like that.
Anger burned through Sophie’s veins, but it cooled just as quickly,
tempered by sorrow that came with knowing he’d been crying because
of her.
But then she remembered something Lady Gisela had told her
during one of the horrible conversations they’d had through Keefe’s
old Imparter: She’d made Keefe take that sedative not to silence his
sobbing, but because she needed to steal some of his blood.
THERE’S the rage I was looking for, Keefe said as Sophie’s whole body
shook. Hold tight to that!
She tried.
But the more memories she studied, the more her heart broke for
him.
She skimmed as much as she could, but some flashes demanded
attention. Like the loud argument in Keefe’s too-fancy bedroom,
where Lord Cassius loomed over a younger, scrawnier version of his
son and shouted, “Alden is not your father!”
“I wish he was!” Keefe snapped back, tearing off his blue Level Two
cape and flinging it across the room.
“Well,” Lord Cassius said, smoothing his slicked blond hair and
glancing at Keefe’s mother, who stood off to the side studying her son
through narrowed eyes. “I suppose that makes us even, since I much
prefer Alden’s sons. But since I’m stuck with this”—he gestured to
Keefe from head to toe and crinkled his nose—“I’m not going to let
you ruin our family!”
Keefe smirked, and Sophie could feel something inside him shift as
he said, “Good luck with that.”