LOGINEMBER’S POVI don’t even blink. I don’t look away from her face. I just hold my hand out to the side.“Daxon,” I say, my voice dead calm. “Phone.”Daxon doesn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. He slaps his heavy, encrypted comms device straight into my palm.Marjorie’s breath catches. Her chest heaves, panic finally warring with the fanaticism.“What are you doing?”I dial the King.It rings twice.“Daxon.” Knox’s voice is a low, dangerous rumble. He assumes it’s an emergency when his personal guard calls him directly.“It’s me,” I say.There is a micro-shift in the line. The danger turns into something much sharper, entirely focused.“Ember. Are you alright?”“I’m fine,” I say, keeping my eyes locked on the housekeeper. “But I’m standing in the east wing service passage with Marjorie. Reyes and Daxon are with me. She was wearing a dark hood, trying to move two sedated women through the servant tunnels. They are burning up with fever, and one of them has a fresh, bleeding knife w
EMBER’S POV“Get your hands off me—” Marjorie wrenches free of Daxon, breathing hard, and rounds on me, and her eyes are wet and blazing, and there’s something in them I can’t read. “You have no idea what you’ve just done. No idea. You think you’ve saved them. You think you’re the hero of this, don’t you, riding in with your guards—”“I think you’re doing something to vulnerable women that you refuse to explain,” I say coldly, “and I think an innocent person doesn’t fight three people to keep it hidden. So here’s what happens now, Marjorie. The girls stay inside. And you—” I hold her furious gaze, and I make the decision because I have watched Knox get gutted by people he trusted one too many times, and I will not stand here and let it happen again. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours.”“Twenty-four hours to what?”“To leave.” I don’t blink. “To pack your things and resign your position and walk out of this house with whatever dignity you have left. Because by the time those twenty-four
EMBER’S POVAnd this time, I don’t freeze.Something in me has had enough — enough of things I don’t understand in this house, enough of cold wrong feelings I can’t name, enough of watching people I liked turn out to be exactly the thing my gut warned me about.And I don’t just walk toward her. I turn my head toward the guard station at the top of the sub-level stairs, where I know Reyes is posted for the night, and I raise my voice.“Reyes.” It cracks down the corridor. “Down here. Now. Bring Daxon.”Marjorie’s head snaps up.“What are you doing—”“Making sure you can’t move them one more inch.” I’m already striding toward her, and behind me I hear boots, the heavy quick tread of guards responding to a summons, and Marjorie’s face in the shadow of the shawl goes from hunted to something harder, something cornered and furious. “You’ve had your chance to explain yourself to me, Marjorie. And you told me it wasn’t my business and disappeared into the dark. So we’re done with that. If yo
EMBER’S POVAnd there it is. The thing under all of it.Because Nathaniel isn’t just his beta.They’ve fought every fight together, been there for each other through every chapter, and now, he would be damning all that.He would be losing his brother.I pull him in. I wrap my arms around him tight and press my face into his chest and hold on, and I feel him fold around me, his chin dropping to the top of my head, his arms banding tight like I’m the only solid thing in the room.“It hurts because you love him,” I say into his chest. “That’s the whole answer, Knox. It’s not a sign you made the wrong choice. It’s a sign you made the right one, and it cost you something real, and it’s supposed to.” I tighten my hold. “The right thing isn’t the thing that feels good. Sometimes the right thing is the thing that guts you, and you do it anyway, because you’re the kind of man who does the hard right thing instead of the easy wrong one. That’s why you’re a good king. That’s why you’re a good ma
EMBER’S POVWe follow, because we’re only human, and we catch it from the doorway of the sitting room — Queenie on the sofa with her tablet, and Nathaniel standing in front of her, holding out a single glass of water like it’s a diamond ring, his whole body rigid with the terror of a man who has faced down feral wolves and never once looked this scared.“I brought you water,” he says.Queenie looks up.She looks at the glass. She looks at him. She looks at the glass again.And the expression that moves across her face — I will treasure it forever — is the specific, profound incredulity of a woman who has just watched the man she married attempt to win back a decade of love with a beverage.“…Water,” she says.“You were — I noticed you didn’t have—” He falters. The machine has no subroutine for this. “It’s — hydration is important. For — the planning.”Queenie stands up. Slowly. She takes the glass out of his hand. She sets it down on the side table with a small, precise click.And the
EMBER’S POV“DEAL,” Queenie announces, at a volume clearly designed to break up whatever is happening between us, clapping her hands together with enormous cheer. “Okay! Wonderful! It’s decided! Ember’s a feral heiress shopping for rough trade; Knox is her devastatingly jealous bodyguard who’s going to assault the staff; Devika’s the madam of a crime lord’s brothel floor, and we are all going to a rogue casino, and there’s a doll of Knox somewhere getting pelted with eggs. This is, without question, the healthiest thing this friend group has ever done together.” She spins her tablet around and stands. “Now. Nathaniel.”And the temperature in the room drops about ten degrees because she says his name the way you’d address a stranger, flat and professional, and I watch him go carefully still.“Nathaniel runs comms,” she continues, not looking at him, all business. “From the car. He’s got eyes on the building; he’s in our ears; he pulls us out if it goes sideways. He does not come inside
EMBER’S POVWhen I step outside the girls’ cabin with Rayana and Queenie flanking me, Rayana is mid-monologue about the caribou she’s planning to devour at dinner — something about sinking her teeth into tender, perfectly seared meat that borders on orgasmic — and I’m half-listening, half-scanning
EMBER’S POVThe laughter dies. Everyone’s eyes slide to Knox, who shrugs without a trace of shame.“Not much of a secret if you all already know.”“You could have at least tried to be mysterious about it,” Rayana sighs. “Where’s the fun in confessing things everyone already knows?”“You said write
EMBER’S POV“Finally,” Rayana drawls. “I thought we were going to have to hose you two down.”“Shut up,” I say, but I’m grinning. “Let’s go eat your caribou.”Dinner is a production.Rafael has transformed the main lodge into something out of a fairy tale — candles everywhere, a fire roaring in the
KNOX’S POVHe blinks, the picture of innocence. “I’m not sure I understand. I explained the purpose quite clearly at the beginning of the evening. Conflict resolution. Closure. An opportunity for all parties to—”“Bullshit.”The word is deadpan, and I see Logan’s head snap up, see Gale’s sobbing st







