Chapter 2

The following morning, I was jolted awake by my phone chiming.

It was a calendar notification — Crimson Chapel private reservation confirmed.

I stared at it for a long moment before everything came rushing back like a flood. This was the surprise I'd poured two entire months into: at the very same Crimson Chapel where he'd first kissed me, I was going to clasp a hand-cut blood ruby around his throat — in the ancient vampire tradition, an offering that declared the other your eternal companion.

All this time, I'd convinced myself the only obstacle between Damien and me was for one of us to take the first step. In hindsight, the irony was almost unbearable.

I pulled open the nightstand drawer and lifted out the pendant. The blood ruby caught the pale morning light, glowing a deep, living crimson — like a single heartbeat suspended in stone.

I closed my fist around it, tightening until the setting bit into my skin. Then I crossed to the window, uncurled my fingers, and watched it tumble into the grey morning air without a sound.

I stepped out of the bedroom and found Damien already in the kitchen.

"Morning." He set a plate before me, his tone easy and familiar, as though last night had never occurred. "Eat."

I glanced down. Eggs over easy. Toast barely golden. Fresh raspberries arranged along the rim. Three years, and he'd committed every preference to memory.

He was the most feared High Lord in the Northeast — calculating, merciless before his court — yet the way he tended to me was as quiet as snowfall, settling over my life so gently I never noticed the weight of it. How could I not have let myself believe it would last?

I swallowed the ache behind my eyes and met his gaze. "Damien, let's end this."

His hand shot forward and locked around mine. The plate struck the tile, porcelain exploding across the kitchen in a sharp, ugly crack.

"No."

I yanked my hand free, my voice fracturing. "You're binding yourself to another woman, Damien. Pick a day and come collect your things."

"That isn't happening." He pressed me back against the counter, leaning in to kiss me. I turned my face away. "Elara, you don't walk out of my life unless I'm in the ground."

"You're about to blood-bond with someone else. Why won't you just release me?"

"I already told you, it's nothing but a contract —"

His phone vibrated, slicing through his words mid-sentence.

Damien's brow creased as he answered. When he ended the call, the strain across his features was unmistakable. "Elara, we'll settle this when I return. Until then, you stay in this penthouse."

But I'd caught the voice on the other end — a woman, sobbing.

"That desperate to go console your consort?"

He stiffened, something unreadable passing behind those silver eyes, but he offered no denial. "Behave, Elara. I have to leave. Wait for me."

He was through the door before I could form a reply.

The door closed. Then the electronic lock engaged from the outside — the heavy, definitive clunk of the deadbolt sliding home.

He'd sealed me in.

I stared at that door for five full seconds. Then I laughed.

He was pledging himself to another woman, yet he wouldn't grant me the dignity of leaving on my own terms.

I spent the next hour testing every possibility, but the security code had been reset. Damien had barricaded every exit. While I'd still been trusting that everything between us was real, he'd already devised how to ensure I couldn't flee.

I stood motionless, surveying the home I'd inhabited for three years — once stark white walls, slowly layered with traces of Damien and me. Those had been my most blissful days.

A thin, needling ache wove through my ribcage. Tears spilled before I registered they were falling.

That was when Margot called.

"Elara, the Ravencroft Trust gala begins at eight tonight. I'll have the car downstairs by seven."

I'd nearly forgotten. Damien's coven philanthropy event — a formal affair for the entire supernatural elite. I was attending as the foundation's public ambassador.

"Margot, Damien locked me inside the penthouse."

Dead silence on the line. "He what?"

"You heard me. Get to the lobby and trip the fire suppression alarm. Building security will have to override the lock for evacuation protocol."

"Give me forty minutes."

After I hung up, I sank onto the couch and waited. My eyes drifted to the small obsidian picture frame on the coffee table — a photograph of Damien and me from our first anniversary. It had occupied that spot since the night I moved in.

I picked it up. The velvet backing had always been slightly loose; I'd never given it a second thought.

On impulse, I turned the frame over and peeled back the panel. A photograph slid free and drifted into my lap.

Damien and Vivienne.

His hands were cupping her face. She was smiling — the smile of a woman who harbored no doubt she was adored. And the way he was gazing at her —

A violent shudder tore through me. The frame slipped from my grasp and struck the floor, glass fracturing in every direction.

I collapsed after it, palms pressing into broken shards. Blood surfaced immediately — bright, warm, human.

I didn't feel it. With trembling hands, I retrieved the photograph and turned it over.

His handwriting. I recognized it the way I recognized my own heartbeat.

To my eternity, Vivienne.

My eternity. So Vivienne was his eternity all along.

Every whispered night when he'd breathed my eternity against my throat — had he been picturing her?

It felt as though an iron fist had closed around my heart, slowly wringing it downward. Recalling Damien's so-called contractual arrangement, I nearly burst out laughing. Tears landed on the photograph, soaking through his handwriting until the ink began to bleed.

Damien, how many lies have you woven around me?

The sharp click of the lock jolted me back. I stuffed the photograph into my pocket, seized my bag, and bolted.

Margot was waiting in the lobby. She caught one look at my hand. "Elara, what happened to your —"

"I'm fine. Drive."

Backstage at the venue, Margot made swift work of bandaging the cuts. I changed into the gown she'd brought — black, floor-length, high-necked — and drew on elbow-length gloves to conceal the gauze beneath.

When I walked to the edge of the stage and saw the two figures seated out front, I went rigid.

Vivienne wore ivory silk, blonde hair falling loose, seated with the effortless poise of old-blood aristocracy. Damien was beside her in tailored charcoal, the aura of a High Lord radiating off him so thick it seemed to darken the air. The gap between their chairs was almost nonexistent.

So locking me away hadn't merely been about preventing my escape. It was about preventing me from witnessing this.

The instant Damien noticed me, surprise flickered across those silver-grey eyes. But it lasted barely half a second before his mask of detachment sealed shut.

It was Vivienne who addressed me first. "Elara, it's been ages. You look exquisite tonight."

I lowered myself into the chair beside her. Same position as always — near Damien's orbit. Close enough to observe, too distant to claim.

Once I sat down, he didn't spare me another glance. Not once.

The moderator spoke about the Trust's humanitarian initiatives. I didn't absorb a word. Beneath my gloves, the wound pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

Then the floor opened for questions.

A journalist rose. "Lord Ravencroft, is your binding with Miss Ashford political or personal?"

Another followed: "The public long assumed Miss Voss was your partner. Does that make Miss Ashford the other woman?"

I watched Damien extend his hand and take Vivienne's. I watched him smile at her — open, unguarded, unhesitant.

"Vivienne and I have been bound by fate since childhood." His voice was level, carrying not a shred of doubt. "She is my blood-fated beloved."

"There is no 'other woman.' Miss Voss and I ended our involvement three months ago. She's a former companion. Nothing beyond that."

Silence. Then every pair of eyes in the hall swiveled toward me.

Three months ago.

Last night, he'd sworn Vivienne was meaningless. Two nights before, he'd been lying in my bed. And according to him, we'd parted ways three months ago.

I couldn't still my hands. Under the gloves, the gauze bloomed warm and wet.

A reporter called out. "Miss Voss! Is Lord Ravencroft's account accurate?"

I felt Damien's gaze settle on me at last.

Not concern. Not regret.

A warning.

He was waiting for me to comply with his narrative — to do what I'd done for three years.

I looked at him. I looked at Vivienne's fingers laced through his. I looked at this immaculately staged deception.

Three years of playing the obedient actress, and tonight was the final curtain.

"Yes," I said quietly, tilting toward the microphone with the ghost of a smile. "We did end things."

Just not three months ago.

Starting right now.