Aveline
I couldn’t sleep. Not with her voice still curling like smoke in my mind.
“You’ll break. They always do. The ones who try to love him.”
I replayed every second of Serafina Moretti’s arrival. The graceful glide. The veiled threats masked in elegance. The way she looked at me—not like a rival or even an enemy, but like a puzzle. A threat she hadn’t quite defined yet.
There was something in her gaze that went beyond hatred or jealousy. It was recognition. Or the terrifying suspicion of it.
She’d seen something.
I stood by the tall window in my room, the moon casting silver against my skin. My reflection stared back—haunted, hardened. I looked nothing like the girl who had crawled through ashes ten years ago. And yet, I still carried that blood, that name. Carrington.
And whatev
