Season 1

The dinner in the city was not the romantic escape I had hoped for. It was a display of power.

Cassian had rented out the entire top floor of The Gilded Lily, a restaurant that usually required a recommendation from a Duke just to see the menu. Now, the only people in the room were us, a string quartet playing something hauntingly low, and a small army of guards standing like stone statues by the elevators.

"You aren't eating," Cassian observed. He was swirling a glass of deep red wine, the candlelight catching the sharp angles of his face. He looked devastatingly handsome, and entirely too predatory for a Tuesday night.

"It’s hard to swallow when I feel like I’m being watched by a firing squad," I said, gesturing toward the men at the door.

Cassian didn't even look at them. "They are there to ensure we aren't interrupted. I find I have a very low tolerance for other people's voices lately. Yours is the only one that doesn't make me want to reach for a blade."

I set my fork down. "That’s a lot of pressure, Cassian. I’m just a woman, not a sedative."

"You’re my wife," he corrected, his voice dropping. "And you’re the first person in twenty-six years who looked at me and didn't see a monster or a mountain of gold. You saw... a project."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "That 'Aggressive Kindness' of yours. Did you think I wouldn't notice? The tea, the tarts, the way you straightened my cravat at the gala. You were trying to domesticate me, Evelyn. Like a stray dog."

My heart skipped. I’d been caught. "I was trying to make our lives liveable. We were miserable, Cassian. You were obsessed with a woman who didn't know you existed, and I was... fading away."

"And now?"

"Now I’m not fading," I whispered. "But I’m starting to wonder if I’m being overwritten by you instead."

Cassian set his glass down with a soft clink. He stood up and walked around the table, stopping behind my chair. He didn't touch me at first. He just leaned down, his lips inches from my ear.

"In the old stories, the villain always loses because he loves the wrong thing," he murmured. "He loves power, or he loves a woman who represents a light he can never touch. But you... you aren't the light, Evelyn. You’re the shadow that fits perfectly next to mine."

His hands settled on my shoulders. They were heavy, grounding, and terrifyingly warm.

"I heard a rumor today," he continued, his voice turning cold. "That the Crown Prince—the man Lady Lilian actually favors—asked about your health. He remembered you from the gala. He said you looked... radiant."

I felt the temperature in the room drop. In the novel, the Crown Prince was the hero who eventually executed Cassian. If Cassian started seeing the Prince as a rival for my affection instead of Lilian's, the timeline was going to accelerate.

"He was being polite, Cassian. It means nothing."

"It means he looked at what is mine," Cassian hissed. He spun my chair around so I was forced to look up at him. His expression was a storm of possessiveness. "I’ve decided to move our winter retreat forward. We leave for the Blackwood Estate tomorrow."

"The Blackwood Estate? That’s in the mountains. It’ll be snowing. We'll be isolated."

"Exactly," he said, a dark, triumphant smile touching his lips. "No Princes. No galas. No 'Sun of the Empire.' Just you, me, and the roses you like so much. I’ve had the conservatory there tripled in size."

He was building the gilded cage. He was rewriting the "villain's end" by simply removing the world from the equation.

"You can't just hide me away," I said, my voice trembling.

"I can do whatever I want," he countered, his thumb tracing the line of my throat. "I’m the villain, remember? And the villain always keeps what he finds."

He leaned down, his forehead resting against mine. For a moment, the madness peaked through—not the loud, screaming madness of the book, but a quiet, desperate sanity that was far more dangerous.

"You spoiled me, Evelyn," he whispered. "You showed me what it was like to be cared for. Did you really think I’d let you go back to the rest of the world after that? You’re the only thing keeping the monster at bay. If you leave... I’ll have to burn everything down just to find you again."

I looked into his bruised-sky eyes and realized the terrifying truth: I hadn't saved him from being evil. I had just given his evil a reason to exist.

The slow burn was turning into an inferno, and as we headed back to the carriage, the first flake of winter snow landed on my cheek—a cold promise of the isolation to come.

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