Uther Carmody has carved his place in the stone halls of court through silence and command, yet the orphaned ward's attendant tests every boundary with her soft voice and untouched skin. He tells himself the guardianship is political, but her yielding presence under his roof awakens a hunger he has never admitted.
Blair Underwood keeps her eyes lowered in the morning light, surviving by never drawing notice. When their fingers meet over the dropped parchment and the last nobles leave the great hall, the air tightens with the scarred noble's expectation that she will surrender what no one else has claimed.
The line between alliance and ruin thins by the hour. Will the dependence they cannot name destroy the future each seeks to protect?
