The fertility consultations, where she had sat gripping his hand while a specialist explained, gently, that her chances were poor — and Dorian beside her, nodding, grave, squeezing her fingers, when he was the reason they were in that room at all.

The night she had wept in the bathroom because a friend announced a pregnancy, and he had held her and said we’ll find a way, I promise, we’re in this together — words she had clung to, words that had made her love him more, spoken by the man who had closed that door himself while she lay unconscious and then locked it and pocketed the key.

The gentleness was the worst part.

If he had been cold about it, if he had ever once let the mask slip, some animal part of her might have sensed the lie years earlier.

But he had been so tender.

He had grieved so convincingly.