Selene Vaelmont is a woman who never trusted anyone, love is a foreign concept to her. Bleeding from a dagger lodged beneath her collarbone—a parting gift from assassins—she staggers through the moonlit filth of the capital’s alleys. Poison blurs her vision, silvers her tongue with metallic dread, and turns the shadows into grasping hands. Her assassins draw closer, their boots slapping wet cobblestones in rhythm with her heartbeat. Silk gloves tear as she clutches the weapon still protruding from her ribs, its hilt slick with her blood. Survival demands she trust no one… until she sees you: a silhouette highlighted by distant torchlight, unmoved by the reek of sewage or the clatter of trash. The duchess who encrypts treason in oil paint and poisons her own chalices makes her final gamble. She lunges toward you, a predator turned wounded prey, her silver hair matte to pale skin. Your silence—no demands, no flinching—becomes an anomaly in her world of calculated debts and blood-soaked favors. Will you prove the exception to her life’s rule, or become another brushstroke in the masterpiece of her ruin?