Weeks later…
The weather is quite bad today. A storm rages outside, wind howling against the windows, rain slamming down in relentless sheets. Thunder cracks in the distance, rattling the panes of glass. The room is dimly lit, just the flickering light from the fireplace casting long, restless shadows across the walls. It fits my mood perfectly—chaotic, brooding, teetering between clarity and madness.
Yesterday was nothing short of mayhem. A frenzy rippled through the entire estate, hushed whispers slithering through the corridors like venomous snakes. It wasn't until dinner that I found out why—the third trial had been postponed. A full month's delay.
On the surface, I had feigned neutrality, nodding along, maintaining a perfectly placid expression. But deep inside? Relief curled inside me like a warm ember. A month without the next trial meant a month without another ridiculous test of endurance, another rigged display of power where I was at a disadvantage before I even stepped foot onto the playing field.
But, of course, relief in this world never lasts long.
One month.
Thirty days.
That's all the time it takes for alliances to shift, and for packs or potential mates to change their minds.
It's also enough time to seduce those whose favor you wish to gain.
And that, apparently, is what every woman around me has been thinking about.
The moment the announcement had been made, panic swept through the ranks. I heard the concerns whispered between servants, and gasped between women in the grand halls—one month was enough for everything to change. Some saw it as an opportunity to strengthen bonds they had already formed; others saw it as a danger, the looming threat that they could be discarded like an old dress for something more... appealing.
The competition has never felt more real.
Not gonna lie, Duke Callum kinda grew on me. And the thought of handling another man just as intense as him? Exhausting. I had just started to figure him out—to anticipate his moods, to sidestep his sharpest verbal barbs, to push back where I could without getting burned. The idea of starting that dance all over again with someone else, another man with an ego the size of a damn castle, made my head throb.
But Callum is not my concern right now.
Cedric Lord is.
The man who wanted me dead.
The first time I heard his name, it was spoken with a certain reverence, a mix of fear and twisted admiration. Cedric Lord was powerful. A man who wielded influence like a weapon, who commanded loyalty with an iron fist. His pack was one of the strongest, his men devoted to him not out of respect but out of sheer, unshakable terror.
And he wanted me gone.
The attempts on my life have been... creative. I'll give them that.
Poisoned flowers in my room. Deadly to humans, innocuous to anyone else.
Acid in my perfume. If it hadn't been for a foolish servant who liked to steal spritzes of my belongings, I wouldn't have known. She suffered instead. A cruel irony, but one that ultimately saved my life.
Food laced with something sinister. The silverware had given it away. The moment my soup touched the plate, the faintest shift in color. Chemistry had always been my strength back in school, and something in my gut told me it was arsenic or sulfur, or whatever equivalent poison existed in this world.
I had refused to eat.
Instead, my patron had forced a servant to taste it in my place.
He died within minutes.
I still hear the gurgling sounds he made, the way his body twitched before going still. I told myself not to feel guilty. He had been a pawn, another dispensable life in a world where my kind—the Duskborn—were considered even lower than that.
But it was hard to swallow the lump in my throat when I saw his corpse dragged away like a broken doll.
I learned something that night.
This world doesn't play fair.
And I will not survive if I don't adapt.
I sit up in bed, pressing my fingers against my temples. The storm outside rages on, and the flickering candlelight barely illuminates my thoughts.
Who is Cedric Lord to me?
A threat. A shadow looming over my every step.
The man wants me dead, and yet, I have never even spoken to him.
What did I do to deserve his wrath? Is it because I'm human? Because I'm an anomaly in their perfect, twisted hierarchy? Or is it something more?
I needed answers.
I stared at the stack of letters on my bedside table, neatly sealed but never answered. The sight of them made something twist inside me, a slow, simmering frustration mixed with an unfamiliar kind of ache. Each letter I had written to Duke Callum remained without a response. Not a word. Not even a rejection. Just silence.
At first, I had told myself that he was busy, that affairs of power and politics took precedence. That men like him had more important things to do than entertain the whims of a woman trapped in the middle of a bloodstained competition. But as the days passed, and then the week, that excuse had begun to taste bitter. The man who once made it his hobby to seek me out, push me, pull me into his orbit—had simply vanished from my world.
I didn't expect warmth from him. I had never deluded myself into believing I held any true significance in his life. But indifference? That was worse than cruelty. At least cruelty meant there was some level of investment, some acknowledgment of my existence.
I had debated sending another letter. Then immediately talked myself out of it. If he wanted to ignore me, so be it. I wasn't some desperate girl begging for attention. I refused to be. But pride and logic didn't stop the sting that came with waiting for something that never came.
I had never thought of myself as weak before. I had survived too much, fought through too many obstacles, and endured more than most. But waiting like this—this pathetic, quiet hoping—it was a different kind of battle, one I hated. It reminded me of all the ways this world could strip a woman down to nothing. How power was not given, but taken. And I was standing in the middle of a storm without a weapon in hand.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe Callum wanted to teach me something. Or maybe he had already dismissed me as someone unworthy of his attention. The thought unsettled me, but I forced myself to sit with it. To embrace the discomfort rather than shove it away. If he had discarded me, then I had no reason to keep looking back.
I reached for the stack of letters and held them in my hands. The weight of them was heavier than I expected. How foolish had I been? Writing to a man who had never made me any promises, who had never once said he would stand by my side? I should burn them. Destroy the proof of my own misplaced expectations.
But I didn't.
Instead, I set them back down, smoothing the edges of the parchment with slow, deliberate movements. Not because I was still holding onto some fragile hope—but because every time I start having hopes for our future. I wanted to remember this feeling. This sting of being overlooked.
I would not beg.
But I will never forget.