Chapter 2

I woke up in the smell of antiseptic. A ceiling so white it hurt.

The first thing I reached for wasn't my head. It was my stomach. Still there. The baby was still there. The breath I'd been holding somewhere at the top of my throat finally came loose — and halfway out, the tears came first. Not from pain. From how close I'd come. I had almost lost the last thing I had left.

"You're awake." Saskia was sitting by the bed, her eyes red, like she'd been keeping watch over me all night. Four years of med school, and she was the only one who still called me Emme instead of "that Ashcroft woman." Now she was the most feared lawyer in the city. She took my hand, and her hand was shaking.

"Emme." She said it slowly, like she was reading out a verdict. "He's using you."

I said nothing.

"A contract wife. A non-disclosure agreement. That black card." Her voice trembled. "He didn't keep you hidden for three years because he was spoiling you, Emme. He locked you away. You were a piece of paper he could tear up whenever he pleased."

"Stop," I said quietly.

"Why won't you let me say it?" Her eyes flooded. "Do you have any idea what they're saying out there? The whole city's swooning over his 'wedding of the century' with Cressida. Number one trending: 'Vale's bride, pretty as a painting.' Number two: 'Locke heiress expecting.'" She stopped. Her voice dropped. "Emme… not one of them mentions you. In this city, you're a person who doesn't exist."

Doesn't exist. The words went into my ear like a needle.

I closed my eyes, and everything I'd been fighting not to think about came flooding up.

Three years ago. The Ashcrofts collapsed in a single night. I went from a gifted surgeon whose hands were steady enough to suture a beating heart to a bankrupt orphan who couldn't even bring herself to stand in a hospital corridor.

That was when Alaric found me. He didn't offer me a single word of comfort. He pushed a marriage contract and a black card across the table together. "Sign it," he said. "You keep your last scrap of dignity. I get what I need." I asked him what that made me. He looked at me the way you'd look at something with a price tag on it. "A fee. For the nights."

Four words. And from then on I was a warm, signed piece of paper. And yet somehow, over those three years, I handed that paper over — heart and all — piece by piece. I brewed him medicinal broths. I took that study of his, cold as an operating room, and remade it wall by wall into something a person could live in. I thought a house could be warmed. I fell in love with the man I owed. How laughable.

The door opened. Cressida walked in, an assistant behind her carrying a huge armful of white roses. Like she'd come to visit the sick. Or to gloat.

"Emme." She set the roses on the nightstand, her voice soft enough to drip. "I came to see you for Alaric. He's very busy. You understand — he has someone more important to look after now." Her hand drifted lightly over her belly. That gesture was for me.

Then, suddenly, she leaned down to my ear, her voice so low only the two of us could hear it. "By the way. Twelve weeks now, isn't it?"

Every drop of blood in me froze. Twelve weeks. I had only confirmed it myself three days ago, quietly, at a clinic. That ultrasound — I'd shown it to no one. Not even Alaric. There was not supposed to be a second soul on earth who knew that number.

"Don't look at me like that." She straightened, smiling sweetly. "A child your own husband doesn't know about… did you really think you could hide it from me?" Her eyes went back to my stomach and stayed a long time. It wasn't the way you look at a person. It was the way you look at a problem you've already decided how to dispose of. "Emme," she said gently, "every step you take in this city, I see it. Clearly."

My scalp prickled. She drew a card from her bag and pushed it across the bed to me. "A small token. If you leave with a little grace, it's better for everyone."

I looked at that card. The "fee for the nights" from three years ago, handed to me now by someone else, laid in front of me again. So that was all a woman was ever worth in their eyes, start to finish — one card.

I didn't take it. With everything I had, I knocked it flying. It cut an arc through the air and grazed Cressida's belly — the faintest touch, less than the sting of paper. And she screamed. Both hands clamped over her stomach, her face white in an instant, like she was about to go into labor right there. "What is wrong with you!"

The door banged open. Alaric came charging in. He crossed the room in one stride and caught her. Then he turned his head. For the first time in three years, he looked me straight in the eye. And this time there was finally something in that look. Disgust.

"Emmeline Ashcroft." He bit down on my full name, his voice pressed low, each word dropping like a stone. "You can't even leave a pregnant woman in peace."

I laughed. I laughed until the tears came again. A pregnant woman. He was breaking his heart over a woman pretending a slip of paper had hurt her — while the day before, the sole of his shoe had crushed another child's heartbeat. He didn't know. He stood three steps away, holding another woman, looking at me with the coldest eyes in the world. And he was never going to know. Because I had decided not to tell him. This child was mine. From today, mine alone.

I looked at him. At that face I had loved for three years and hated for three years. I knew I shouldn't ask. But I asked it anyway, softly, the last question. "Alaric — did you ever love me? Even for a day? Even for one night when I brought you soup and you didn't push me away? Even for a second?"

He didn't hesitate. Not for a second. "No." The word was light. As light as stating a fact he'd written down long ago. And it wasn't even enough for him. "We only ever gave each other what we needed," he said flatly. "Don't make yourself out to be more than that."

That was the sentence. The seam he'd been ripping at for three years split all the way open. The answer had never been what I was waiting for. What I was waiting for was to give up. And now I had, completely. Strangely, it stopped hurting. Wind poured in through the gap. I pressed a hand to my chest. Empty. But where it was empty, something else seemed to be growing. Something very hard, and very cold.

I lifted my head. This time I didn't cry. I looked at him and spoke, slow and even, a calm so foreign I hardly knew it as my own. "Alaric Vale." Three years, and it was the first time I'd used his full name. "I want a divorce."

The room went still for a beat. The hand holding Cressida tightened, just barely. "…Fine," he said. "I'll have Merritt send the papers over. You'll receive—"

"No need," I cut him off. "I'll draft the agreement myself. You just sign." I turned my head away and stopped looking at him. "Now — please leave. I paid for this room."

He stood there and looked at me for a long time. It was the first time in three years he couldn't read a single thing off my face. Then he took Cressida's arm, turned, and left. The door clicked shut. Three years. This time I was the one who'd shut him out — instead of the woman shut inside, keeping watch over a pot of cold soup.