But what if he didn’t kill her?
What if it truly was an accident, a terrible tragedy, and he’d spent three years living under the weight of false accusations, drowning in grief and guilt, blamed for something he didn’t do?
What if he was innocent, and she arrived already fearing him, already believing the worst, already seeing him as a monster?
How would she know?
How could she tell?
She pressed her hands to her face and squeezed her eyes shut, but that only made the images more vivid.
Elara’s perfect smile.
Theron’s scarred hands.
Blood on stone.
A body at the bottom of stairs.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t even know what he looked like, not really.
She didn’t know if he’d be kind or cruel, gentle or violent, mourning or moved on.
She didn’t know if he was a murderer or a victim of vicious rumors.
She didn’t know anything except rumors and fear and her own desperate, foolish hope that maybe—maybe—he might be different from her father, different from Marcus, different from every man who’d ever looked at her with disgust.
But what if he wasn’t different?
What if he was worse?
Kat sat up slowly, her legs shaky, her head spinning slightly.
The room tilted, and she had to grip the edge of the mattress to steady herself.
Her nightgown was cold and clammy against her skin, and she shivered despite the blanket.
This was the last morning she’d wake here.
In a few hours, she’d leave this place forever, traveling north to meet a man who might be a monster or a savior or something in between.
A man who’d already loved and lost someone.
A man who might have killed that someone.
A man whose first wife had been everything Kat wasn’t.
That thought settled in her stomach like a stone.
Even if Theron was kind, even if he was innocent, even if he welcomed her with open arms—how could she ever measure up to Elara?
How could she ever fill the space left by a woman who’d been beautiful and accomplished and perfect in every way?
She couldn’t embroider.
She could read.
She stuttered when she was nervous, which was almost always.
She had no training in managing a household, no experience entertaining guests, no skills that would make her useful as a lady.
She was small and plain and marked as cursed, and everyone who looked at her would know she was a poor replacement for the golden-haired woman who’d come before.
Would Theron see Elara every time he looked at her?
Would he compare them constantly, finding Kat lacking in every way?
Would he call her by the wrong name in moments of distraction?
Would he keep Elara’s rooms locked and preserved, a shrine to a dead woman that Kat could never enter?
Would she spend her entire marriage living in the shadow of a ghost?
The thought made her throat tight, made her eyes burn with tears she refused to shed.
She didn’t know which version of Theron she’d dreamed more clearly—the one who’d resent her for not being Elara, or the one who’d accept her for being herself.
The one who’d keep her in the shadow of his first wife’s memory, or the one who’d help her step into the light.
Maybe she’d dreamed them all with equal intensity because all were possible.
Because she truly didn’t know what awaited her.
Because the future was a blank page, and she had no idea what would be written there.
All she knew was that by nightfall, she’d be on her way to find out.
And no amount of dreaming could prepare her for the reality of the man she’d meet at the end of that journey—or the ghost of the woman who’d come before her—or the dark rumors that surrounded them both—or the question of whether she could ever be enough for a man who’d already had everything.
Kat rose on trembling legs and went to the washbasin, her bare feet cold on the wooden floor.
She splashed cold water on her face, gasping at the shock of it, trying to wash away the lingering unease of the dream.
The water was ice-cold, and it made her skin tingle, made her feel more awake, more present.
But even as the water cooled her skin and cleared her head, she couldn’t shake the images.
The golden-haired woman falling, her white nightgown billowing around her like wings.
The blood on Theron’s hands, red and wet and damning.
The servants whispering, always whispering, their words like poison.
The locked room, preserved like a shrine.
The portrait in the hall, Elara’s painted eyes following her wherever she went.
The question that haunted her, that burned in her mind like a brand:
Could she ever be enough for a man who’d already had everything?
Who’d already loved someone perfect and lost her?
Who might still be mourning, still be grieving, still be comparing every woman to the ghost of his first wife?
And more terrifyingly: Could she survive being married to a man who might be a murderer?
Who might have blood on his hands and violence in his heart?
Who might see her as nothing more than a duty to be discharged, a womb to carry his heirs, a replacement for something precious that had been lost?
She stared at her reflection in the small mirror above the washbasin.
Her face was pale, her freckles standing out like spots of rust.
Her red hair was tangled from sleep, wild and unkempt.
Her green eyes were wide and frightened, dark circles beneath them from too little sleep and too much worry.
She looked exactly like what she was: a cursed daughter, a broken thing, a poor replacement for someone golden and perfect.
She could only hope—desperately, foolishly hope—that Theron might see her as something other than that.
That he might see her as a person, not a replacement.
That he might give her a chance to be herself, not a pale shadow of someone else.
And she could only pray—to gods she’d never been allowed to worship, gods she didn’t even know the names of—that the rumors about Elara’s death were just that: rumors.
Lies.
Vicious gossip born of fear and misunderstanding and the human need to make sense of tragedy.
Because if they weren’t…
Well.
She’d survived being unwanted and abused by her family for twenty years.
She’d survived her father’s fists and her mother’s coldness and her siblings’ cruelty.
She’d survived being locked away and forgotten and treated like a curse made flesh.
But she wasn’t sure she could survive being murdered by a husband.
She wasn’t sure she could survive living in constant fear, always wondering if today the day would be she said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, angered him in some way she couldn’t predict or prevent.
She wasn’t sure she could survive being compared to a dead woman for the rest of her life, always found lacking, always insufficient, always wrong.
Still, what choice did she have?
Her fate was sealed.
The contract was signed.
The arrangements were made.
In a few hours, northern riders would arrive to collect her, and she’d be carried away to a future she couldn’t imagine and couldn’t escape.
All she could do was hope that when she finally met the Shadow Lord, she’d find a man capable of mercy.
A man capable of kindness.
A man capable of seeing her as something other than a curse or a replacement or a duty.
And not a monster with blood on his hands.
The dawn light grew stronger, painting her room in shades of gold and rose.
Birds began to sing outside her window.
Somewhere in the house, she could hear servants beginning their morning routines—footsteps in the corridor, the distant clatter of pots in the kitchen, the soft murmur of voices.
Her last morning here.
Her last few hours in the only home she’d ever known.
She should feel something, she thought.
Sadness, perhaps.
Nostalgia.
Loss.
But all she felt was a strange numbness, and beneath it, a current of fear so strong it threatened to pull her under.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of Theron.
Fear of his dead wife’s ghost.
Fear of not being enough.
Fear of being too much.
Fear of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, being the wrong thing.
Fear of ending up at the bottom of a tower staircase with her neck broken and her husband’s hands stained with her blood.
Kat pressed her palms flat against the washstand and took a deep, shaking breath.
She could do this.
She had to do this.
There was no other choice.
She would go north.
She would meet Theron.
She would marry him.
And she would hope—desperately, foolishly, stubbornly hope—that he was the man who’d lost his wife to tragedy, not the man who’d murdered her in rage.
She would hope that he could see her as herself, not as a replacement for someone else.
She would hope that she could survive whatever awaited her in the North.
Because hope, however fragile, however foolish, was all she had left.
And she would cling to it with everything she had, even as fear threatened to drown her, even as doubt whispered that she was walking into a nightmare, even as the ghost of a golden-haired woman haunted her thoughts.
She would hope.
Because without hope, she had nothing at all.