THE PROXY BRIDE: His bride. Her Secret.
Could his gentle eyes be chasing not her, but the shadow of Zephyrine that lingered in her blood, her face, her very presence in the Drevan world?
The idea pierced her like glass.
If that were true, then what she felt—the quickening of her heart, the stolen glances, the warmth of his nearness—was nothing but illusion. A cruel recycling of grief, a substitution. Not love. Never love.
Her lips trembled.
She allowed herself to ask the question aloud, a whisper nearly lost in the night: “Does he love me… or does he love a ghost?”
The silence answered.
She folded into herself, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass without thought, her mind a battlefield of suspicion and desire. The candle at t