Chapter 1 Prologue

“Rule Number One, Eris: A mistress doesn't have a heart. She only has a target.”

Madame V’s voice was a frigid whisper that seemed to crawl into every corner of the velvet-lined room—a stark reminder that within the high-gloss walls of Ivy Heights, emotion is not just a weakness; it is a deformity. In this sanctuary for the elite and the lethal, we are taught to breathe in sync with the shadows and to treat our pulse as a countdown clock.

But in this moment, the rigid laws of the Sanctum are a blurred, distant memory. The catechisms of the "Perfect Consort" have dissolved into the heat of the present.

The only reality I can feel is the bruising grip of Julian Thorne’s hand around my neck.

His fingers are a paradox—pressing with a force that threatens to throttle the life from me, yet trembling with a desperate need to bring me back to life all at once. He pins me against the cold stone wall of the terrace, the moonlight catching the jagged edges of his silhouette. I struggle for air, each shallow, hitched breath thick with the suffocating scent of expensive bourbon, ozone-heavy rain, and the sheer, unadulterated danger radiating off him like a fever.

I’ve dreamed of this for three years.

For one thousand and ninety-five nights, I replayed this exact sensation in the theater of my mind—being crushed between the arms of the man who murdered my identity and threw the ashes to the wind. He smells of old money and new sins, a scent that once promised me the safety of a kingdom but now only signifies the ramparts of the enemy.

“Who are you, really?” Julian’s voice is a jagged rasp, stripped of its usual aristocratic polish.

His gray eyes, usually as cold and impenetrable as slate, are bloodshot and wild. They scour my face with a frantic intensity, searching the curve of my jaw and the depth of my pupils for even a flickering shadow of the girl he used to know—the girl he thinks he killed.

“Why is it that every time I close my eyes, I see your face?” he snarls, his grip tightening until white spots dance in my vision. “Why does your ghost haunt every woman I touch? Why do you taste like a memory I never gave myself permission to keep?”

I do not fight him. To fight is to be an equal; to submit is to be a master. I tilt my head back against the stone, my movements slow, fluid, and deliberate. I let the thin silk strap of my emerald dress slip from my shoulder—a silent invitation, and a lethal trap.

This was the pinnacle of Class 2.2: Controlled Vulnerability. At Ivy Heights, we are taught that weakness is not a lack of strength, but a sophisticated art form. I look up at him through my lashes, allowing tears to well in my eyes. They are beautiful, crystalline drops that catch the light, but they hold no grief. They are merely chemical reactions, tools of the trade. They are malice disguised as heartbreak.

Slowly, I raise my hand. My fingertips, cold and steady, begin to trace the faint, white scars on his knuckles—the very same knuckles that were bruised and bloodied the night my family’s estate burned to the ground. He thinks those scars are symbols of his survival, the marks of a man who fought his way out of the wreckage. He doesn’t realize they are the receipts of my vengeance, the physical proof of the debt he owes.

“I’m just a girl you found in the mud, Julian,” I whisper. My lips graze the shell of his ear, nearly brushing against his skin—just enough for him to feel the scorching heat of my breath against the cold rain on his neck. “Didn’t you save me? You plucked me from the filth of the Iron Roots and brought me here. You gave me a name. You gave me a purpose. You made me this way.”

I lean in closer, my voice dropping to a silken thread of poison. “You created this… monster.”

With every touch, I can feel his body begin to betray him. The steady rhythm of his heart stutters against my chest. Beneath the thin fabric of my thigh strap, hidden by the shadows of the emerald silk, I feel the cold, reassuring weight of the small, sharp silver dagger.

One quick pull.

The tip is only an inch away from his carotid artery. I could end it all right here. I could watch the light fade from those haunting gray eyes and finally avenge the gray ashes of my father, the last terrified breath of my mother, and the stolen, fractured future of my brother. I could be free before the moon sets.

But a quick death is a gift, and the Thornes don’t deserve any gifts from me.

I want to see him crawl first. I want to see the "Prince of the City" scorched by a love so absolute it feels like a third-degree burn—an obsession that will slowly, methodically consume his sanity until there is nothing left but the sound of my name. I want to drag him to hell, but only after he has built the staircase for me with his own hands.

I wasn't just here to kill a man. I was here to reclaim a throne. I was here to own the empire they stole from me, brick by bloody, gold-plated brick.

“I hate you,” Julian utters, the words sounding more like a prayer than an insult. His voice is thick with a volatile mixture of bitterness and agonizing desire.

He knows I am his ruin. He can feel the abyss opening up beneath his feet every time I smile, yet he is a man drowning, and I am the only water he wants to drink. Slowly, his lips press hard against the pulse point of my neck. It is fierce, possessive, and desperate. It is a kiss that feels less like affection and more like a brand—a claim laid on a territory he has already lost.

I close my eyes and let him claim my skin. I let him believe he is winning. I let him believe that the girl from the mud has been tamed by the master of the house.

Go on, Julian. Love me. Love me until you lose your grip on your company, your family, and your soul. Love me until your very name turns to ash in the mouths of your peers. Love me until you finally realize that the woman in your bed—the one you think you’ve finally broken—is the executioner you’ve been waiting for all these years.

The Jade is no longer just a stone to be worn and admired. It is a blade, forged in the fires of Ivy Heights and sharpened by three years of silence.

Tonight, the first cut is yours. And I promise you, Julian… it won’t be the last.