Chapter 1

The ceramic rim caught me mid-breath, a white explosion of pain and noise that sent me sideways before I understood I'd been hit. My head snapped left, dark hair whipping loose from the bun I'd pinned three hours ago, when the night still had a shape I recognized. The crack of the vase against my temple sounded like a door slamming shut on a life I'd been stupid enough to think was mine.

Selene Cross stepped back, watching the shards rain down across the pale-rose carpet, her chest rising and falling in slow, satisfied breaths. She still held the neck of the vase in her right hand, a useless white stub, like a trophy she hadn't decided whether to keep. The rest of the ceramic scattered around my bare feet, some pieces catching the low lamplight and throwing thin shadows across the cream linens.

"You're carrying another man's child, Amara."

Her voice was ice-water over gravel, calm enough to be cruel. She said it the way you'd read a weather report, and that was worse than if she'd screamed. I could hear the gala in my ears still—the clink of glasses, the hollow laughter of people who'd spent six hours pretending they liked each other—but it felt like a memory belonging to someone else. The only sound that mattered now was the blood in my ears and the way Selene's gold stilettos clicked as she stepped closer.

"I'm not." The words came out of me in a whisper, my hand already pressed to the stinging cut on my left temple. It came away with a thin line of red. "That's not true. That's not true."

Selene smiled, and the smile had been rehearsed for weeks. I could see it in the way it settled onto her face like a mask she'd practiced in a mirror, working out which angle made her look most powerful. She was still in her deep-emerald gown from the charity dinner, the fabric falling over her tall frame like a second skin. Her platinum hair was straightened to a razor edge, sharp as her cheekbones. The diamond drops at her ears caught the light and threw tiny fragments of color onto the pale wall.

I was seven months pregnant, exhausted, wearing a thin ivory hospital gown that left my back bare, my feet bare on the cold carpet. I'd checked myself in at 10:40 for observation after feeling dizzy at the gala, and the doctor had promised me a quiet night. Ten minutes of silence before the baby dropped, that was all I'd wanted.

Instead I got her.

"Do you think I came here without proof?" Selene tilted her head, studying me the way you'd study a stain you weren't sure would come out. "Do you think I spent all night watching you laugh with my Jonah, watching you touch his arm like he belonged to you, without preparing?"