Novels by Amaya

Chapter 5 I didn't move for a long time after the voice went quiet. Just stood there pressed against the wall in my bare feet, water forgotten, listening to footsteps fade down some hallway I didn't know the shape of yet, in a house I was apparently already inside of according to someone who'd needed to confirm it. *She's inside the mansion now.* Like I was a delivery. Like someone had been expecting me to arrive and was checking a box off a list. I didn't sleep after that. I don't think I'd really been sleeping before it, either. --- Morning came anyway, the way it does even when you don't want it to, and I made myself go down for breakfast because staying in that room felt worse than facing whatever waited outside it. The dining room was already full. Isabella at one end of the table, smiling at me over her coffee cup in a way that didn't reach anywhere close to her eyes. Adrian across from her, watching me the way you'd watch something you were deciding whether to be amused

Chapter 4 I never told anyone about the figure across the street. Not my father, who wasn't allowed visitors that close to a wedding. Not Sophia, who would've shown up at my door with a baseball bat and a hundred questions I didn't have answers to. I just folded it up small and carried it with me into the one day I didn't have room to carry anything extra, and by the time the stylist was pinning my hair back, I'd half convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing. Half. --- The wedding wasn't a wedding. It was a production. Three hundred chairs. A string quartet that never seemed to stop playing even during the parts where nobody was supposed to be listening to music. Senators. A woman I recognized from the cover of a business magazine standing near the bar with a smile that didn't move past her mouth. Every guest dressed like they were auditioning for something, and me in the middle of it in white, feeling less like a bride and more like something set out on a table for people

Chapter 3 "He doesn't know." I said it back to Valen like repeating it might make it make sense. It didn't. "He'll know within the hour," Valen said, checking his watch like my whole life was a line item he was running behind on. "Dress for the evening. He'll want to meet you before the announcement goes out." "You're springing a wife on him. Tonight." "I'm informing my son of a decision that's already been made." He said it like correcting someone's grammar. "How he receives that is his to manage, not yours." I didn't have anything nice to say back, so I didn't say anything. --- The Ravaryn house wasn't a house. It was the kind of place that made you lower your voice without deciding to — glass and stone, a staircase curving up into shadow like it had somewhere better to be than showing off for guests. A woman in black led me through it without speaking, heels clicking against marble in a rhythm I found myself matching just to have something to focus on besides my own pulse.

Chapter 2 They let me back in faster than I expected. Maybe Marlow said something. Maybe it didn't matter anymore, once a name like Ravaryn got involved. My father was already sitting when they brought me in, and something about the way he looked up — hopeful, like maybe I'd come back with good news — made what I had to say so much worse. "Dad." I sat down across from him and put the card on the table between us, face up, like it was evidence of something. "Valen Ravaryn came to see me." His whole body went still. "He wants me to marry his son. In exchange, he says he'll get you real representation. The best in the state, he said. A real chance." I watched it land on him, watched his face do something I hadn't seen it do the whole time I'd been growing up. Not the lying face. Something worse. Fear that wasn't for himself. "No." He said it flat, immediate, like there was no room in it for discussion. "Absolutely not. Seraphine, no." "Dad, they're going to convict you. Every law

I was scraping burnt rice out of a pot when the phone rang. 11:42 p.m. My father calls at 11:15 every Tuesday, right when his shift ends, so I already knew something was wrong before I looked at the screen. "Is this Seraphine Ardenne?" "Yeah, who's this?" I turned off the faucet too fast and got water down my sleeve. "Officer Reyes, Metro PD. Your father's been taken into custody." The pot slipped out of my hand. I remember the sound more than dropping it. "Custody for what? Is he hurt—" "I can't get into it over the phone. You'll need to come down." She hung up before I got another word out. I grabbed my coat and didn't notice I still had slippers on until I was three blocks away. --- The station smelled like burnt coffee. The guy at the desk had a coffee stain on his shirt shaped almost like Ohio — I don't know why I noticed, except it was easier than thinking about anything else. "It's a homicide case," he said, once he finally looked up. It took a second to land. My da