The empire denied to my father, to me?
Money. Power. Who cares?
None of it matters.
Not without her.
Cecilia isn’t some bargaining chip or temporary bride.
She is it.
The thing I didn’t know I was waiting for.
The one person who could slice open my chest and make my heart beat again.
And she’s been stolen from me.
My piece-of-shit uncle?
He dies tonight.
One scream at a time.
I gave him a chance to slink away.
That’s what I’d been doing all morning. Giving him the courtesy of a bloodless defeat.
But now?
Now I’m bringing the war to him.
I want bodies.
I want his name erased from marble, and ledger, and tombstone alike.
He took her.
He touched what’s mine.
And so help me, I will burn down this whole island if that’s what it takes to get her back.
No mercy. No negotiations.
Only fire.
Chapter Thirty-Three-Cecilia
My face stings where Atlas’ demented uncle, Dimitri Stavros, hit me.
It’s a hot, throbbing burn beneath the skin, radiating down my jaw and into my neck.
I taste blood—metallic, sharp—as it slips from my split lip and mixes with the blood already running from my nose.
He hit me several times.
With a balled-up fist.
Like a fucking coward.
