The corridors of this manor have become a trap of my own making, where every dusk brings the carriage to a halt and my husband to the dinner table with his sharp gaze. Yet it is Odette who waits in the shadows, her precise commands pulling at the threads of my restraint.

When we both reach for the glove in the hallway, our fingers brush in a moment that could ruin everything I have built. The fear of his discovery mingles with the hunger she awakens in me, the one I have hidden since childhood isolation that left me craving to be seen.

She will claim what is mine to give, and I stand at the edge of surrender, knowing that once I cross into her arms there is no safe return to the life I know.