“Does it disgust you to do this with me? Then you shouldn’t have begged me.”

Delilah had lost everything: her family, her title and her home.

Branded a traitor and facing execution, she fell to her knees before Crown Prince Vicente, the man she hadn’t seen in ten years, and pleaded for her life.

She didn’t yet know what that choice would cost her.

“Then you’ll do only what I tell you. Eat what I give you. Stay quiet.”

The longer she stayed by his side, the more her sense of self crumbled.

“What could you possibly do without me, Delilah?”

His beauty was suffocating, his love was like a gilded cage.

She had to escape. Somewhere his hands could never reach.

She would have, if not for the moment he appeared before her again.

“I’m sorry. I was late. Everything… everything was my fault.”

The proudest man in the empire now stood before her, wearing the most desperate expression she had ever seen.