Mag-log inChapter 16: The Hunt / What I Refused to SeeI stood in the wreckage of her room long after Penn left.Divorce papers lay scattered across the floor. I had thrown them there myself. I didn't remember doing it. The blue bottle was still in my hand, held so tightly the glass was warm. In my other hand was her phone, the screen lit. Her face was on it. A photograph she must have taken of herself, in some quiet moment when no one was looking. She wasn't smiling. She was just looking at the camera as if she were waiting for something.I couldn't put it down.I had never looked at that screen before today. In all the months she had lived under my roof, I had never once seen what she kept on her phone. I had never asked. I hadn't wanted to know anything about her that I could not control.That told me everything about the kind of man I was.I turned the phone over. On the back was a small crack in the corner of the case. She had dropped it once. She had kept it anyway.Every cold word I had
Chapter 15: The Morning After / The PhoneMy head was pounding so hard I thought it might split open.That wasn't normal. My tolerance for alcohol was well known. Men had tried to drink me under a table for years and had ended up under it themselves. Whatever I'd had last night should not have touched me.But when I opened my eyes, the room spun.I shut them. Opened them again. The ceiling slid sideways and settled. My mouth tasted of expensive whiskey, and under it, something else. Something sweeter. A taste I couldn't place and didn't like.I tried to remember the end of the evening. A glass in my hand. Seraphina's voice, soft and close. The door.Nothing after that. A blank, smooth wall where the rest of the night should have been.I had never lost a night in my life. Not once. I could tell you the name of every man in every room I had ever walked into. I could repeat conversations from years ago, word for word.This wasn't a hangover. Something was wrong.I pushed the thought asid
Chapter 14: The Call / The GateI sat on the floor of my dark room with my phone in both hands.Rain was still tapping on the windows. The photographs of my mother were spread out across the carpet in front of me. I had laid them out one by one, in rows, the way you lay out evidence. Her face, over and over. Her smile in the garden. Her hand on my shoulder when I was small.I scrolled through my contacts without really reading them. My thumb moved on its own. Names I didn't care about slid past. Names I didn't trust. Names I had never once called.Then it stopped.Mr. Derek.My mother's lawyer.I stared at it.Warren had forbidden that number when I was sixteen. *Never call that man,* he had said. He'd said it across the breakfast table, calmly, buttering his toast. *He'll only fill your head with nonsense.*I had obeyed. I had always obeyed. I had deleted nothing, but I hadn't touched that name in five years. I had just let it sit there at the bottom of the list.I didn't know what I
Chapter 13: The Door She Shouldn't Have OpenedI walked without any direction.The photographs of my mother were pressed against my chest. I had been holding them so tightly the edges had already gone soft from the damp. The rain started as a thin mist. I barely noticed it. Then it got heavy. Cold. Constant. Within minutes it had soaked through my dress and down to my skin.I didn't lift my face to it. I didn't try to hide from it either. I just kept walking.My whole life had been a lie.That was the only thought I had. It went around and around in my head, with nothing else to stop it.The man I had given everything to. The man whose Beta seat I had protected with my silence, with my body, with my whole future. Warren. He wasn't my father. He had never been my father.He had helped kill my mother. For money.I kept going back to small things. The way he used to knock twice on my door before he came in. The way he had taught me to ride a bicycle when I was seven, running behind it wi
Chapter 12: Wear RedThe atelier went silent when I stepped out of the fitting room.It was seven in the morning on Friday. The sun was barely up. Forty people were at their tables with pins in their mouths and fabric in their hands, and every single one of them stopped.I was in red.Blood red silk, cut on the bias, with a high neck that closed at my throat. The front was plain. Almost severe. But the back was bare, from the nape of my neck all the way down to my waist.And the mark was out.I had no tulle. No scarf. No cover of any kind. The silver crescent sat between my shoulder blades, in the open air, glowing faintly in the morning light. For five years I had hidden it. I had built whole outfits around hiding it.Not today. Today it was my signature.Mara came up beside me. She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she whispered, "You're going to start a war."I picked up a pair of black shears from the cutting table. I fastened them to my belt at the hip, where everyone could
Chapter 11: The Night Before FridayThe atelier was silent when I walked in.It was Thursday, 8:00 in the morning. The studio floor should have been loud. Sewing machines, radio, scissors, forty people calling across the room for pins and chalk and the good ruler.Nobody was moving.They stood in a half circle around the big cutting table. Seamstresses. Pattern-cutters. The interns who had been with me three weeks. All of them frozen, all of them looking down at a single tablet lying flat on the wood.I didn't need to see the screen. I already knew.The King Kneels to the Seamstress.Under it, the photo. My fingers on Ambrose's throat. His head tipped into my palm.Mara stepped out of the crowd. She had her phone in her fist and dark circles under her eyes."It's been ringing since five," she said. "Three investors. The Crown Press Office. A woman from a bridal magazine." She took a breath. "She wants to know if you're available for the King's wedding."Somebody in the back made a sma







