What neither of them had planned for was the key, and the cut, and the scars, and the particular thing that happens when a cold man kneels down on a floor and, for the first time, actually sees the person he has married.

There is a thing that hard men rarely admit, which is that their hardness is usually a wall around something they decided long ago not to feel.

Caspian had built his young.

He had learned early that the world rewarded the man who wanted nothing and punished the one who let himself need, and he had organized an entire life around wanting as little as possible from anyone.

It had made him rich.

It had made him effective.