The grand hall of the Dominion Palace had never felt so still.
Whispers slithered through the crowd like vipers, wrapping around marble columns and slicing through silk gowns. Aristocrats, ministers, and shadow-wielding nobles stared in stunned silence as Lena Hart stood before them—not as a guest or servant—but as a revenant.
Dominic Raine’s icy expression didn’t falter as he stepped toward her, but his eyes flickered—once. The smallest crack. Quickly buried.
“You should be dead,” he said softly, as if he’d rehearsed those very words for years.
Lena’s gaze did not waver. “I was. The fire took my body, but not my soul.”
“You disappeared,” he hissed, voice low enough that only she could hear. “We buried what was left of you.”
“And yet,” she murmured, stepping forward until their breat
