Chapter 221

LUMINA   I pressed my back against the hospital corridor wall, my hands trembling as the weight of what Xenois had just told me settled into my bones like poison. Andy was captured. Sophia was dead. We'd won the war that had been tearing our family apart for months. So why did it feel like we'd lost everything that mattered? Riley knew. He knew we'd killed Sophia, the woman he still called Mama Sophia despite everything she'd done to him. All those weeks of careful bonding, of watching him slowly open up to us, of believing we were finally becoming a real family -- it had all been an act. He'd been playing the part of the grateful rescued child while waiting for a reunion that would never come. The irony was bitter enough to choke on. We'd fought so hard to save him from Andy's influence, only to discover that we'd already lost him the moment we decided Sophia had to die. I pushed myself away from the wall and made my way toward the private suite where they'd set up Lyn for recovery. I