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the fitting
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2026-08-14 08:46:51
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bound by deception COUNTING DAYS"
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX — "COUNTING DAYS"Isabella's POVI didn't sleep.I hadn't slept in three nights, not since the clinic, not since the mirror, not since I'd watched my own face come apart for ten seconds and understood, with a clarity that still sat in my chest like a swallowed stone, exactly how close I had come to losing everything in a single unguarded moment. I lay in the dark beside a husband who believed, or claimed to believe, that I was carrying his child, and I stared at the ceiling and did math until the numbers blurred into something almost like prayer.Gestational dating.I'd learned more about it in seventy-two hours than most physicians learned in a year of residency — every method, every margin of error, every small technical loophole a compromised doctor could exploit if he understood exactly what was being asked of him and was frightened enough, or paid enough, to comply without asking why. Crown-rump length. Last recorded cycle. The specific, forgiving imprecision of
bound by deception two lines
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE — "TWO LINES"Isabella's POVThe clinic was the kind that didn't ask questions, which was exactly why I'd chosen it.Three towns over, tucked behind a strip of shuttered storefronts nobody bothered to revive after the old textile mill closed, the kind of place that existed for women who needed something handled quietly and had the money to guarantee it stayed that way. I'd registered under a name that wasn't mine — Grace Whitfield, the same alias I kept ready for exactly this kind of occasion, a woman who existed on paper only, who had no husband, no title, no sister sitting at home decorating her own upcoming wedding with a ring my careful architecture had bought her.The receptionist hadn't looked at me twice.I'd worn a plain coat. No jewelry. My hair pulled back instead of styled, my face bare of the careful attention I usually gave it, because a woman who wanted to disappear into a waiting room didn't dress like Luna Isabella. She dressed like nobody. I had got
bound by deception RING
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR — "RING"Irabella's POV"Ira." Isabella crossed the street toward me with her bag still clutched in one hand, her voice pitched warm and easy, as though we'd simply run into each other on an ordinary afternoon. "What are you doing all the way out here?""Dress fitting." I nodded toward the boutique behind me, my heart still hammering from the sight of that unmarked door. "You?""Errands." Her eyes didn't waver. "Boring ones. You know how it is." She glanced once, briefly, back toward the building she'd come from — a flicker, gone almost before I caught it, and then her smile widened, bright and untroubled. "I should get going. Big day tomorrow, remember? Can't have bags under my eyes for the ring ceremony."She kissed my cheek, warm and public even here, on an empty street with no audience to perform for, and I understood, watching her walk away with that same unhurried confidence, that the performance had simply become permanent. There was no version of Isabella le
bound by deception the fitting
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE — "THE FITTING"Irabella's POVThe east corridor had been empty.I'd stood there for eleven minutes after the message arrived, my heart going hard against my ribs, watching every shadow along that long marble hallway resolve into nothing — a curtain moving in a draft, a serving cart abandoned near the kitchen doors, the distant sound of the orchestra still playing behind me in the ballroom I'd slipped out of. No one came. No second message arrived. When I finally gave up and turned back, Roman was leaning against the wall near the corridor's entrance, arms crossed, watching me with an expression that told me, before he said a single word, that he already knew exactly what had drawn me out there."That was me," he'd said quietly. "The message. I needed to see whether you'd come alone, and whether anyone followed you when you did.""Why.""Because Daemon isn't the only one being watched right now." His eyes had moved once down the corridor behind me, checking, always
bound by deception ISABELLA'S TOAST"
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO — "ISABELLA'S TOAST"Irabella's POVI hadn't slept since the garden.Three nights had passed since Isabella stepped out of the hedgerow shadow in her pale silk robe, and in all three nights she hadn't said a single word about what she'd seen. That silence had become its own kind of torment — worse, somehow, than if she'd come to my room that first night and screamed at me, worse than if she'd told our parents, worse than any version of consequence I could have braced myself to survive. Isabella never wasted a weapon on the first available moment. She waited. She built. She let the not-knowing do the work of breaking a person down long before she ever needed to lift a finger herself.I understood, standing in front of my mirror three nights later while my maid fastened the last clasp of my gown, that tonight was when she intended to use it.The dress was ivory.I hadn't chosen it. My mother had — insisted on it, actually, over my quiet objection, saying the color woul
bound by deception NOTHING TO SAY"
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE — "NOTHING TO SAY"Irabella's POVThe garden at night belonged to no one, which was the only reason I still went there.Every other room in my life had an owner. The house belonged to my parents and the version of me they preferred. The banquet hall had belonged, that night, entirely to Isabella. Even my own future, apparently, now belonged to a bargain struck across a chair by the window with a man who wanted a room Daemon couldn't enter. But the garden — overgrown at the edges where the household staff didn't bother maintaining it, dark enough that the moon did most of the work the lanterns were meant to do — the garden had never asked anything of me. I came here when I needed to remember what it felt like to exist without being watched.I didn't hear him arrive.That was the strange thing about Daemon, even now, even after everything — a man his size should have announced himself in the quiet of a garden at eleven at night, and instead I only knew he was there whe
bound by deception five years changed nothing
Chapter ThreeFive years later.The car stopped in front of the house I'd been exiled from.Nothing had changed.Same white columns. Same perfectly trimmed hedges. Same cold, lifeless mansion that never felt like home.I stepped out.My hair was longer now. Wine red. I'd dyed it the day after I lef
bound by deception exile
Chapter TwoI told myself I wouldn't look.I stayed in my room. Sat on my bed. Stared at the wall.But then I heard his voice again, clearer now, coming from the foyer downstairs.My body moved on its own.I stood. Walked to my bedroom door. Opened it just a crack.Just one look. That's all. Just t
bound by deception stolen
Chapter OneI watched my twin sister try on my wedding dress.White lace. Delicate beading. The dress I'd dreamed about since I was twelve, back when I still believed in fairy tales and happy endings.Isabella twirled in front of the mirror, her pale face glowing with something I hadn't seen in yea
bound by deception bonds
Chapter FiveI woke up to sunlight burning through my curtains.My body ached. My lips still tingled from where he'd almost kissed me.Almost.I pressed my fingers to my mouth. Remembered the way he'd looked at me. The way his hands felt on my waist.The way he'd pulled away like I was poison.I sa
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