After I was reborn, I tore up my blood-ink invitation to the Vale inner circle with my own hands.
And turned down both my childhood sweethearts' passionate confessions.
Because in my last life, I chose one of them — Daphne Vale.
On the day of our blood-bound union, he ran off for Lydia Everett, and the shock killed the grandmother who'd raised me alone.
At my lowest point, my other blood-bound companion took my hand and said: "You still have me. I will never let you down."
He walked me through the darkness, but after our union, he turned cold.
I thought he regretted that we couldn't have children.
Then came a car accident. He left me dying on the pavement to go save Lydia, who had nothing worse than a scrape.
I died right there. And as my soul drifted, untethered, I finally learned the truth.
My entire life had been nothing but a love game between the three of them.
They'd already drawn up their wills, signing every holding and every front to Lydia Everett's name.
And my years of infertility? That was them too. To prove their devotion to Lydia, they'd bribed a doctor to take my uterus while I slept.
This time around, I was going to stay far away from all of them and live a life that was mine.
——
When I tore up the invitation, my handler in the Ashford house went pale.
"Vera Ashford, what are you doing?"
Four names from our territory had been offered seats within the Vale inner circle this year.
I was the only one who'd earned it on merit — a mind the elders valued more highly than a hundred soldiers, recognized after I broke every cipher they put in front of me.
Every old man in the network, not just my handler, had high hopes for me.
I kept my expression calm. "I don't want the Vale seat anymore. I've been taken into The Order of the Black Lily. They've agreed to send their own people to watch over my grandmother."
"Ah. I see. All right. I know the Ashford name carries more grief than gold these days, Vera. Train hard, build yourself a future, and make your Nonna proud."
I nodded. Before I even had time to grieve for everything that had happened in my last life, Daphne and Maeve Marlowe were already on the line, telling me to come downstairs.
The whole way down through the Ashford house, men stared and women whispered behind their hands.
Someone caught my heel on the stairs.
Called me a whore.
I had no idea what was going on. I got to my feet, limping.
At the turn of the corridor, I caught Lydia talking to my two blood-bound companions, her voice pitched just soft enough to carry.
"I did see Vera getting out of a Vale lieutenant's car in the middle of the night, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe she really did earn her place on her own."
She touched her bottom lip with her ring finger, a single, almost reverent gesture, as if blessing the words.
"Stop defending her, Lydia. She won't even let anyone see her test results. She's obviously too guilty to let anyone find out."
"Exactly. You're just too kind, Lydia, that's why she keeps fooling you. A scheming woman like her is capable of anything."
After I'd entered The Order, I'd sworn a blood oath of silence. My records were sealed — every score, every file, every trace of who I'd been before. That is the Order's deeper code, and not even a Vale can break it.
I never imagined that silence would become the very thing Lydia used to frame me.
And my two blood-bound companions, who knew exactly how hard I'd worked for my grandmother's sake, still chose to believe every word Lydia laid in front of them.
I laughed bitterly to myself. Told myself it didn't matter.
Once I crossed onto the Order's compound, all of it would be classified ground no Family could touch.
After that, I could cut ties with them completely.
No more listening to words designed to wound.
No more living like a fool inside someone else's web of lies, only to end up dead and discarded on the pavement.
I walked up to the three of them as if I'd heard nothing. The corridor went quiet the way a room does when something dangerous steps into it, except the dangerous thing was only me, and they didn't know it yet.
"You wanted to see me?"
Daphne dropped the contempt of a moment ago and smiled, smooth as a man closing a sit-down in his own favor.
"Vera, this is good. We'll be moving in the same circles again. All those years of hard work finally paid off."
His thumb moved once along the inside of his signet ring. In the old life I never knew what that meant. In this one, I did.
Maeve was smiling too.
