Ember Vane POV

The dining room table was a slab of imported marble, cold enough to preserve a corpse.

Estelle sat at the head of the table.

My seat.

Julian sat to her right.

I was placed on the left, facing the window-positioned like a guest they were merely obligated to feed.

Julian placed a bowl of salad in front of me.

"Eat," he said.

I looked down at the bowl.

It was tossed in a thick peanut dressing.

I was deathly allergic to peanuts.

Julian knew this.

I had spent our second date in the ER simply because he had kissed me after eating a Snickers bar.

He had held my hand while my throat closed up, swearing he would never let anything hurt me again.

"I can't eat this," I said quietly.

"Why?" Julian asked, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth. "It's just salad. Don't be difficult."

"It has peanuts, Julian."

He paused.

He looked at the salad, then at me.

There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes, followed immediately by a wash of indifference.

"Oh," he said. "I forgot. Just pick around them."

"You can't 'pick around' an allergy," I said, pushing the bowl away.

"God, you're dramatic." Estelle sighed, twirling her wine glass. "Julian made this from scratch. You're so ungrateful."

"I'm ungrateful because I don't want to die of anaphylactic shock?"

"Stop it." Julian slammed his hand on the table, the silverware rattling. "Both of you. Ember, if you don't want it, starve. I don't care."

Estelle smirked, taking a sip of wine.

"Ow!" she gasped suddenly, dropping her fork.

"What?" Julian was instantly alert.

"My ankle," she winced, grabbing her leg. "I think I twisted it again under the table. It throbs."

It was a lie.

She hadn't so much as shifted in her seat.

But Julian was out of his chair in a second.

He scooped her up into his arms, bridal style.

"I'm taking you to the car," he said. "We need to get that checked."

"But dinner..." Estelle whimpered.

"Screw dinner," Julian said.

He walked past me, carrying her like she was made of glass.

He didn't look at me.

He didn't ask if I wanted to come.

He left me sitting alone at the table, staring down at the bowl of poison he had served me.

I stood up.

I grabbed my keys and followed them.

I needed to hear it.

I needed the final nail in the coffin.

I drove to the hospital, keeping a safe distance behind Julian's black SUV.

I followed them up to the VIP floor.

The door to Estelle's room was cracked open.

I stood in the hallway, pressing my back against the cold wall.

"You're so good to me, Julian," Estelle's voice drifted out. "But what about Ember? The wedding is so close."

"Ember is a debt," Julian said.

His voice was clear. Clinical.

"She saved my life. I owe her. Marrying her pays that debt. It makes me look honorable to the Commission."

"But do you love her?" Estelle asked.

There was a silence.

A long, heavy silence.

"I love what she did for me," Julian said finally. "But look at her, Estelle. She's broken. She's scarred. Every time I look at her, I see the crash. I smell the fire."

He paused.

"Once the ring is on her finger, the debt is paid. I can stash her at the country estate. She can paint or whatever she does. But you..."

I heard the rustle of sheets.

"You are my true Queen. You always have been. The wedding is just a formality. A business transaction."

I slid down the wall until I hit the floor.

A debt.

A transaction.

I wasn't a person to him.

I was an invoice he was waiting to clear.

He didn't see my scars as a badge of courage.

He saw them as graffiti on his property.

I stood up.

My legs felt surprisingly steady.

The grief was gone.

The hope was gone.

All that was left was the cold, hard resolve of a woman who had nothing left to lose.

I walked away from the door.

I walked out of the hospital.

I got into my car and drove.

I didn't go back to the penthouse.

I drove to the bridge.

I pulled the engagement ring from my finger and hurled it into the Hudson River.

It sank without a sound.

The vow was broken.

Now, it was time to burn the rest.

Ember Vane POV

The rain in New York doesn't wash you clean.

If anything, it just pushes the grime deeper into your pores.

I walked until my shoes were soaked through, the expensive leather ruined, my toes numb and useless.

My lungs burned with every breath, a fire that had nothing to do with the scars on my back and everything to do with the fever spiking in my blood.

I collapsed on a street corner in Hell's Kitchen.

I didn't feel the pavement hit my knees.

I just felt the sudden, merciful cessation of movement as the world tilted sideways and went black.

When I woke up, the air smelled of bleach and stale coffee.

It wasn't the private suite at Mount Sinai with the Egyptian cotton sheets Julian usually paid for to keep up appearances.

It was a public ward.

A thin curtain separated me from a man coughing up his lungs on the left.

A nurse with tired eyes was checking my IV bag.

"You're awake," she said, not looking up from her clipboard. "Pneumonia. You're lucky a cab driver saw you go down."

"How long?" I croaked. My throat felt like it was lined with broken glass.

"Two days."

Two days.

I looked at the scratched plastic nightstand.

My phone was there, the battery indicator blinking red.

There were no missed calls from Julian.

Not one.

There were, however, fifteen messages from a number I didn't save but knew by heart.

Estelle.

I opened them, my thumb hovering over the cracked screen, trembling slightly.

They were photos.

The first was a close-up of a necklace.

A heavy, antique emerald choker set in gold.

Julian said this brings out my eyes. It was his grandmother's. Didn't you say you wanted to wear this for the wedding? Oops.

The second was a video.

I shouldn't have played it.

It was shaky footage, taken from a distance, maybe by a bodyguard who knew better than to intervene.

Julian and Estelle were standing on a cliffside overlooking the Palisades.

The wind was whipping Estelle's hair, and Julian was brushing it away from her face with a gentleness I had never known.

"I promise," Julian's voice carried over the wind, tinny but unmistakable. "You are the only thing in this world I care about losing."

He kissed her forehead.

It was a tender, reverent kiss.

The kind of kiss you give a holy relic you are terrified to break.

I turned off the phone.

The tears didn't come.

My tear ducts felt like dried riverbeds, scorched by the fever.

I discharged myself against medical advice four hours later.

I sat on the curb outside the hospital, shivering in my damp, wrinkled clothes, and called Julian.

He answered on the first ring.

"Where the hell are you?" he barked. "The dress fitting is in an hour."

"I was in the hospital," I said, my voice flat.

"Again? You're becoming a liability, Ember. I don't have time to play nursemaid."

"Come pick me up," I said.

He arrived twenty minutes later in a black SUV.

He didn't get out to open the door.

I climbed in, the heat blasting against my feverish skin, making me nauseous.

"You look like a corpse," he said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror with cold detachment.

"I feel like one," I said.

He merged into traffic, heading north, away from the city.

"We aren't going to the penthouse," he said.

"I know."

"My father wants us at the Estate until the wedding. He thinks it's better for security. And it keeps you away from... distractions."

He meant it kept me away from the press.

He meant it kept me in a cage where I couldn't embarrass him.

We drove through the iron gates of the Moretti Estate in silence.

It was a fortress of stone and ivy, beautiful and suffocating.

Julian parked the car near the main entrance.

"Go inside," he said, not killing the engine. "Get cleaned up. You look pathetic."

I opened the door, the cold air biting at my skin.

"Julian," I said.

He looked at me, his hand already on his phone, likely texting her.

"What?"

"Do you love me?"

He didn't look up.

"I'm marrying you, aren't I? Stop asking stupid questions."

He rolled up the window.

I stood on the gravel driveway, watching him drive toward the guest house where I knew she would be waiting.

He didn't answer the question.

But that was an answer in itself.