Adrian POV
"You don't have to tell me tonight," Elena said, curled beside me on the sofa, the fire in the small hearth casting the only light in the room. "I know I asked, but I didn't mean to demand it."
"I want to tell you," I said. "I've been circling it for months. I think avoiding it has cost us both something we didn't need to lose."
She waited, patient, the way she'd learned to be with me over months of careful, incremental honesty.
"My parents died when I was sixteen," I said. "Kelly was twelve. It wasn't an accident, though that's the official story that got filed with the council. It was The Veil, early operations, before Quinn fully consolidated control. They were testing what happened when they applied pressure to a family with significant psychic assets and no protection."
"Adrian—"
