Cambria's breath caught in her throat.
The shadows that framed Lucien Vale seemed almost alive, curling like smoke around the edges of the past she had tried so hard to bury. He was older now, gray at the temples, lines chiseled into the harshness of his face, but the eyes remained unchanged. Cold. Calculating. Dangerous.
She didn't move. Didn't speak. Her mind raced to reconcile the impossible. Lucien Vale had died. She had seen the wreckage. Attended the funeral. Buried the myth.
But the man standing before her wasn't a ghost. He was real. And very much alive.
"I asked you a question, Cambria." His voice was a gravel drawl, every syllable soaked in menace. "Are you ready to choose a side?"
Silence stretched between them like a wire about to snap.
"I mourned you," she said at last, her voice low. "I built my life on the lie of your death."
"And you built it well," Lucien said, stepping closer. "But everything built on ashes eventually burns."
