Chapter 1
Eva
The castle feels like a tomb.
The servants move like ghosts, their eyes downcast, speaking only in whispers when they think I can’t hear.
And I move among them like the most terrifying specter of them all, lost and bewildered and purposeless.
Nothing has changed. But everything has changed.
The emptiness—the cavernous, echoing void of my own home—mocks me everywhere I turn. I am alone. Truly and finally alone.
And yet everything remains exactly as it was before my father died. Ihadno father to consult, to lean on for advice. He was already gone. As for Robin Rivers, it was right to send her away, to stamp out the insipid emotions she stirred up in me like mud in still waters.
I keep telling myself to focus on whatreallymatters: my father’s funeral arrangements, vengeance, and ensuring my enemies don’t smell weakness bleeding from the Novak name.
But relief won’t come.
Grief drags at my feet no matter how quickly I move around, no matter how much I try to dodge it. Not just for my father—unexpectedly sharp, despite the fact that he’s already been gone so long—but forher.
For her soft warmth. For the way she made a fortress feel like a home. Now Castle Blacklake has become a mausoleum.
I pause outside her door, the guest room, where the door stands slightly ajar, as if waiting for her return.
Don’t.
My feet carry me forward anyway.
The room still smells faintly of her—that synthetic strawberry scent of her hair and something indefinably sweet under it that used to drive me to distraction. I inhale deeply, hating myself for the weakness.
The bed is pristine—my staff wouldn’t dare leave it unmade—but I can still imagine her there in the sheets. Still remember the way she looked while she slept.
I sit down, thenliedown, pressing my face into the pillow where her head rested. It doesn’t smell like her, but I can summon up the memory of her scent, and for one perfect, unreal moment, I can pretend she’s still here.
Still mine.
The illusion shatters when I realize what I’m doing.
Eva Novak doesn’tpine, for God’s sake. Eva Novak takes what she wants, discards what she doesn’t, and destroys anything that threatens her empire, including inconvenientfeelings.
I sit up and hurl the pillow across the room as hard as I can. It hits the wall and slides to the floor, innocent and soft and sad-looking.
What is she doing right now? Has she forgotten me already, moved on to someone else? Is some other woman touching her, hearing those soft sounds she makes when she’s lost in pleasure?
The thought is torture. I want to hunt down every other person who even looks at her sideways. I want to remind them—remind her—exactly who Robin Rivers belongs to.
But shedoesn’tbelong to me anymore. I sent her away. She’s a free woman.
And I am not. I have an empire to run.
I pull myself together and go to the study, where I have plenty of work to do, so at least it can be a distraction. An hour later, a soft knock shakes my concentration, dragging me back into the harsh depths of the present reality: a dead father and an absent lover.
Leon opens the door, enormous and imposing as always, but there’s something different in his posture. Wariness. He’s been walking on eggshells around me for days.
“The interment,” Leon says carefully. “Are we going down today?”
Heat flares behind my sternum. I’ve been avoiding this, avoiding the reality of putting my father’s ashes into the family crypt eversince they arrived two days ago. That would make everything real. “Stefan is not available.”
