I practically fled from that corridor, the phantom echoes of Clyde’s voice—cold, detached, utterly final—clawing at my heels.
‘I’ll execute her myself.’
‘Less hassle.’
‘I’ll find a more prestigious shewolf down the line.’
Each word was a shard of ice piercing the fragile hope I had foolishly nurtured. How could I have been so blind? To imagine, even for a moment, that a bond forged in political necessity could ever warm into something real… that he could ever see me as more than a temporary inconvenience, a piece on his strategic board to be sacrificed without a second thought.
My fondness for Clyde was a disease, and I had to cut it out before it consumed me entirely.
I stumbled through the palace, vision blurred by unshed tears, desperately searching for a shadowed corner to hide
