Alina couldn’t sleep.
Not when the truth clawed at her like it had teeth.
She stood barefoot on the balcony of the remote chalet, wrapped in nothing but one of Nicholas’s black shirts, wind whipping her hair back. Below, the wreckage of the Vault smoked in the moonlight. But it wasn’t the ashes behind her that haunted her.
It was the face from the folder.
Ophelia Vale.
Her mother.
Alive?
Lies were nothing new. She’d grown up in a castle of them. But this…this was something primal. A stolen truth. A heart ripped from her chest before she even knew how to bleed.
Behind her, the balcony doors opened.
Nicholas stepped out, shirtless, bruised, a whiskey glass in hand. His gaze found her like a lock picking open.
“You’re shaking.”
“Not from the cold,” she whispered.
He offered the gl
