The silence after her declaration was thunder.
Alina didn’t flinch. She stood in the center of the war room in her blood-red dress, chin lifted, eyes unblinking. Every man in the room was watching her. But she only cared about one.
Lorenzo.
He didn’t look away.
Didn’t smirk. Didn’t challenge.
He bowed his head.
And the others—Sabine, Nicholas, even the guards—shifted.
Because something had changed.
The balance of power had tilted.
Alina wasn’t the girl who’d clawed her way to this château for vengeance.
She was the woman remaking the ground they all stood on.
She was the one they now feared.
And in this world, fear was loyalty.
Sabine laughed softly. “Well, then. I suppose we follow the Queen now.”
Nicholas drained his glass. “Let’s hope she doesn’t kill us all.”
Celine was
