Nothing around Fern would collapse. The room would not burst into flame, the mats would not melt beneath her, but when Ambrose was done with her, she would be a smoldering pile of what used to be Fern Taylor all the same, and there was no way she could go back. She would be unalterably changed, ruined for anyone else. And she knew it as surely as if she’d been kissed by a thousand men.
