LOGINKAEL'S POV"What are you doing here?"The question snaps out of me the second the front doors hiss shut.I didn't slow down or hesitate. With Sylvie wrapped in my arms and her fingers bunched into the fabric of my shirt, I surged toward the stairs.I feel the hitch in her breathing against my neck. Every step pulls a sharp inhale from her—the pain in her ankle but the heat of her skin is a distraction I can’t afford; the moment I spot him, my world narrows to a single point of cold, hard focus.He’s leaning against the sideboard in the foyer, cradling a crystal tumbler like he’s been there for years or he's even welcomed here, and he'd gotten past my security. Thomas, my stepbrother.My grip on Sylvie tightens just enough to feel the solid reality of her against the sudden ghost of my past. Thomas straightens, his eyes traveling over us with a slow, predatory leisure. He lingers on the way I’m holding her, his gaze lingering and tracing the line of her legs, a lopsided smirk spreadin
SYLVIE’S POV“Sylvie”The voice sliced through the silence just as I reached out to touch the latch. I froze, the air turning to ice in my lungs. Slowly, I turned around.And there he was, Kael. I watched him walk toward me, slow and deliberate, like he knew I wasn’t going anywhere else. Two buttons of his shirt were undone, just enough to draw my attention to the warm stretch of skin beneath, and his sleeves were rolled up, exposing forearms that were tattooed and tensed with every step he took.My breath caught somewhere between my chest and my throat as he got closer, his eyes fixed on mine steady, intense, and impossible to escape. The air shifted around us, thick and charged, and I felt it settle under my skin, leaving me rooted in place as he closed the distance.Why is he here? I'm sure he went out after breakfast and —“Sylvie, what are you doing here?” His voice cut through my thoughts."I... I was just walking around. Yes, I was looking for a new place to explore since you s
The silence in the dining room was thick enough to choke on. I watched him push his plate aside a small, final gesture that signaled his morning was already moving on, leaving me behind in the dust.He reached for his phone, his thumb swiping across the screen with an efficiency that made my stomach twist. The breakfast was a problem he had "solved" for the morning, and now he was onto the next."So," I said, my voice cutting through the quiet like a dull blade.He didn't look up immediately, he just stared at his phone while typing a message or command, and then slowly raised his eyes. "Yes?""What am I supposed to do today?" I asked him while staring at my plate.He set the phone face down on the table, giving me his full attention. "What do you mean, Sylvie?""I mean—" I gestured vaguely at the high ceilings, the silent maids, the perfect, stagnant air of the house. "What is the plan for me? Today, Tomorrow or Every day after that because so far, what I've done is to be at the libr
SYLVIE’S POVKnock. Knock. Knock.The sound broke the silence of the room, pulling me violently from my dream. I woke up with a gasp caught like a jagged stone in my throat, my eyes flying open to meet the sterile expanse of the white ceiling. The pale morning light bled through the curtains, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air, a stark contrast to the heavy, heated darkness I had just escaped.My heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel the rhythmic thud in my teeth. Below the duvet, my legs were tangled in the sheets, twisted tight like vines as if I’d been thrashing in the heat of a fever. I pressed my palms flat against the mattress, feeling the dampness of the fabric. I was drenched in sweat, my skin humming with residual heat that made the air feel too cold against my shoulders.I lay still, staring upward, waiting for the world to stop spinning. But the link to the dream was thick and stubborn. It refused to snap.It was all still there, etched into th
SYLVIE POVI didn't know how I got there.That was the first thing that came into my mind. There was no hallway, no threshold, no moment I could point to and say “there, that's when I chose this.”Just the door and the sudden quietness around me, the way certain things arrive without warning and you understand immediately they have been coming for a long time.I immediately walked into the room and I knew it was his. Not from memory because I obviously had none but from something that lived buried in memory, in the body itself. The low amber light pooling across dark furniture. The smell underneath everything, wood and heat and something I had no language for yet but recognized anyway, the way you recognize a voice you've never consciously heard before.And the wall.I couldn't stop looking at the wall.Iron rings at varying heights. A length of rope coiled over a low leather bench, patient as something sleeping. A folded strip of black leather. A short-handled crop. Other things I h
The ECG machine was the loudest thing in the room.A low rhythmic sound, nothing dramatic, just a patient mechanical breathing that had been marking time since before I arrived. Sylvie was watching the window when I came in. The glass was fogged at the corners from the warmth inside, and the sky was a flat, noncommittal gray.She turned when she heard the door.I had changed out of the wedding clothes, which was a small mercy for both of us. I pulled the chair from the corner and set it beside the bed, and I sat, and I looked at her, the IV taped to the back of her hand, the bruise already spreading along the vein, her face carrying the particular exhaustion of someone who had been frightened for hours and was only now beginning to let the edges of it soften.“You came," she said, her voice was rougher than usual."Of course I came." I kept mine even.She looked at her hands. "I ruined it," she said quietly. "The whole thing. Every person in that city was watching, and I just, I could
KAEL'S POV I woke up slowly, the room was thick with a silence broken only by the soft, rhythmic pull of her breathing. I didn't move. My gaze fixed on Sylvie where she lay curled beneath the soft velvet blankets, and I studied her the way a man studies a situation he suspects might be counterfe
KAEL'S POVThe television screen flickered with camera flashes and polished smiles as Darian stood tall and composed looking victorious with a 'Sylvie' by his sideMy expression didn't change but something inside me sharpened as John stood across from my desk, tablet in hand, waiting for my instruc
DARIAN'S POV The house flipped upside down in two days. Total chaos, but the good kind. The dining table is buried under piles of fabric scraps—silks, satins and all colors you could think of. Boards in the living room stuck full of flower sketches: roses, lilies, wild stuff mixed in. Designers e
DARIAN'S POVThe house had never felt this alive.For a week it had been empty and cold, and every hallway echoed with her absence, every room a sharp reminder of how she used to fill the space. Now the air felt warmer, buzzing with frantic energy.She sat beside me on the sofa, her hand resting li







