“Lady Katriana Ashford,” he announced, his voice carrying into the room with perfunctory coldness, as if he were announcing the arrival of a tradesman rather than a member of the family.
Kat stepped inside, and immediately, every eye turned to her.
The drawing room was one of the finest rooms in the house, decorated in shades of cream and gold, with tall windows that let in floods of afternoon light.
The furniture was elegant—curved legs and silk upholstery, everything positioned just so to create an atmosphere of refined taste and wealth.
A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling, its crystals catching the light and scattering it in rainbow patterns across the walls.
The fireplace was marble, carved with more lions and laurel wreaths, and above it hung a portrait of some long-dead Ashford patriarch who stared down with stern disapproval.
But Kat barely registered any of this.
Her attention was fixed on the people in the room, on the expressions on their faces as they looked at her.
Her father, Lord Edmund Ashford, sat in his high-backed chair near the fireplace like a king on a throne.
He was a handsome man, even in his fifties, with silver-streaked dark blonde hair that he wore swept back from his high forehead.
His features were strong and aristocratic—a straight nose, a firm jaw, piercing blue eyes that could freeze a person with a single glance.
He wore a coat of deep burgundy over a cream waistcoat; his cravat tied in an intricate knot that spoke of careful attention from his valet.
Everything about him radiated authority, control, power.
He looked at Kat now with that familiar expression—disappointment mixed with distaste, as if she were a business venture that had failed to yield the expected returns.
His jaw was set in that hard line she knew so well, the one that meant he was displeased, and someone was about to suffer for it.
Her mother, Lady Vivienne, perched on the settee like an elegant bird, her posture perfect, her hands folded gracefully in her lap.
She wore a gown of sapphire silk that matched her eyes—those beautiful blue eyes she’d passed to only one of her daughters, and it wasn’t Kat.
Her white, blonde hair was arranged in an elaborate style, woven with pearls and small sapphire pins that caught the light.
She was beautiful, even in her forties, with the kind of classical features that painters loved to capture.
Porcelain skin, high cheekbones, a rosebud mouth that could smile with devastating charm or curl with equally devastating cruelty.
She looked at Kat with open disgust, her nose wrinkling slightly as if she’d detected an unpleasant smell.
Her blue eyes—so like Celeste’s, so unlike Kat’s green ones—were cold as winter ice.
Her older brother, Marcus, stood by the fireplace, one hand resting on the mantle in a pose of casual elegance.
At twenty-five, he was the pride of the family—tall and handsome, with his father’s dark blonde hair and his mother’s blue eyes, with the kind of easy charm that made him popular in society.
He wore his coat with careless grace; his cravat slightly loosened in a way that suggested he’d just returned from some outdoor activity.
Riding, probably.
He loved to ride, loved to hunt, loved any activity that allowed him to demonstrate his physical prowess and masculine superiority.
He looked at Kat now with barely concealed contempt, his handsome face twisted in an expression that made her stomach clench with familiar dread.
That look promised cruelty, promised that whatever was about to happen, he would enjoy her suffering.
And there, on the settee beside their mother, was Celeste.
Beautiful, perfect Celeste, with her golden hair arranged in artful curls that cascaded over one shoulder, each ringlet placed with careful precision to frame her face in the most flattering way.
Her skin was porcelain-perfect, unmarred by a single freckle or blemish, glowing with the kind of health and vitality that came from proper food and fresh air and a life lived in sunlight rather than shadows.
Her blue eyes—their mother’s eyes—were currently brimming with tears that tracked down her cheeks in crystalline perfection, each tear seeming to catch the light like a tiny diamond.
She wore a gown of pale pink silk with delicate lace at the sleeves and neckline, the kind of gown that cost more than most families earned in a year.
The color made her look like a princess from a fairy tale, innocent and lovely and precious.
Her hands clutched a lace handkerchief—real lace, not the cheap imitation—and she was sobbing delicately into it, her shoulders shaking with perfectly calibrated distress.
Kat had seen this performance before.
Many times.
Celeste had perfected the art of crying beautifully—no red nose, no puffy eyes, no ugly sobbing sounds.
Just delicate tears and trembling lips and an overall impression of fragile femininity in need of protection.
It was a lie, of course.
Celeste was about as fragile as a steel blade.
But she knew how to use her beauty as a weapon, knew how to manipulate with tears and trembling and the appearance of helplessness.
“Katriana.” Her father’s voice cut through the silence like a whip crack.
He never called her Kat, never used the diminutive that might suggest affection or familiarity.
Always Katriana, formal and cold, a name that created distance rather than connection.
“Come here.”
It wasn’t a request.
Kat moved forward on unsteady legs, her wild red locks—impossible to tame, impossible to hide—bouncing with each step.
She’d tried to pin them back this morning, had spent nearly an hour attempting to force them into some semblance of order, but several had already escaped, spiraling around her face like flames.
She could feel them now, could feel the weight of them against her neck and shoulders, could feel how they marked her as different, as wrong, as cursed.
She saw her mother’s lip curl in distaste as she approached, saw the way Lady Vivienne’s eyes fixed on her hair with an expression of revulsion.
“Do you know why you’ve been summoned?” her father asked, his tone suggesting this was a test she was likely to fail.
“N-no, Father.”
The stutter emerged immediately, as it always did under stress, the consonant catching in her throat and forcing her to push it out with effort.
She hated it, hated the weakness it revealed, hated how it made her sound like a frightened child rather than a grown woman.
She’d tried for years to control it, had practiced speaking alone in the library, had read aloud to herself for hours trying to train her tongue to cooperate.
But the moment she was nervous or frightened or upset, the stutter returned, betraying her anxiety to everyone in the room.
She saw Marcus’ eyes gleam with satisfaction at the sound, saw the corner of his mouth twitch in a smirk.
He loved when she stuttered.
It confirmed everything he believed about her—that she was weak, defective, inferior.
“A proposal of marriage has been received,” her father said, his tone suggesting he was discussing a business transaction rather than his daughter’s future.
He might as well have been talking about the sale of a horse or the purchase of a new property.
“From His Majesty the King, on behalf of Archduke Theron Blackwood, Lord of the Shadow Marches.
The King himself has requested that one of our daughters be wed to the Archduke, to strengthen the ties between the southern nobility and the northern territories.”
The Shadow Lord.
Kat’s breath caught in her throat, her heart suddenly pounding so hard she could feel it in her temples, in her wrists, in her chest.
Everyone knew of him—the scarred archduke who ruled the northern territories with an iron fist, whose temper was legendary, whose face was said to be so hideously disfigured that he wore a mask in public to avoid frightening women and children.
Rumors swirled around him like dark smoke, whispered in drawing rooms and servants’ quarters throughout the kingdom.
They said he’d killed his first wife in a fit of rage, had thrown her from the battlements of his castle and then claimed it was an accident.
They said he practiced dark magic, that he’d made pacts with demons, that strange lights could be seen in his castle at night and inhuman screams heard echoing from the dungeons.
They said his scars were a punishment from the divine for his sins, that his face had been burned by holy fire for refusing to worship Seorr, that he was more monster than man.
They said his castle was a place of nightmares, built on ancient pagan ground where human sacrifices had once been performed.
They said he kept the old ways, worshipped the old gods, performed rituals that would make a decent follower of Seorr’s blood run cold.
They said he had a terrible temper, that servants who displeased him simply disappeared, that his rages could last for days and leave destruction in their wake.
And now her father was saying his name in connection with marriage.