LUCIEN’S POV

My boots pounded the stone floors like war drums, each step fueling the rage boiling inside me. The palace corridors blurred—servants scattering out of my way, their faces a mix of confusion and fear. I didn’t care.

Adele’s words echoed in my head: ‘Your father's alive!’

My father. Alive. The man I’d killed with my own hands. The monster who’d beaten the hope out of me, blamed me for Mom’s death, turned every day of my childhood into a nightmare. How? How the hell was he breathing?

I didn’t have answers. But Naomi would.

She had to.

I slammed into the servants’ wing. Her door was at the...