And yet, I knew too that Max was right. I’d known it since the day Esmaris tried to beat me to death. I had seen such terrible things, lived such terrible things, that I mistook Esmaris’s meticulous care for love. Even though he cared for me the way one cared for a prize horse: pampered it, groomed it, broke it and rode it, and discarded it when it began to kick. After all, I was the lucky one.
