Damien swallowed back a lump in his throat, shaking his head. For all Amma had been to him and all she had done for him, it was the thing she hadn’t that suddenly struck him so deeply. Damien had been privately glad to not have the talisman readily available—it meant he could not follow his father’s orders just yet—but more than that, unburdening Amma of the talisman so that she could make choices based solely on what she wanted also meant dissolving what tied the two of them together. What had at first been a hateful and cumbersome chain had grown into a tether he desperately held onto, an
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