They were married in early spring, at the lodge, with a small fire built into the hearth despite the mild weather because Wren had grown fond, in the strangest way, of the particular warmth of that room — the room where she'd first told him something true, where he'd first told her he loved her, where twelve years of careful, patient ruin had finally given way to something worth building instead.

Damon Voss stood at the altar they'd built themselves, in the great room overlooking the mountains, and watched her walk toward him with an expression that held nothing guarded in it at all — no calculation, no careful weighing of costs and leverage, nothing left of the man who'd once decided people's fates from behind a desk in a glass tower. Just a man, entirely undone by wanting someone, and no longer ashamed of it.