Aria pov

I had told myself a hundred times that if I ever saw her again, I’d spit in her face, maybe even claw that smug grin right off her lips. But standing there in the corridor, half-naked and trembling, I wasn’t the girl I wanted to be. I was raw and stripped bare—her perfect prey.

My fingers clenched the sheet tighter, nails digging into the fabric. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Her laugh was low, silk dragged across broken glass. “And yet… here I am. Isn’t that funny?”

The guards at the end of the hall didn’t move. Their eyes flicked to us, then away again, like they’d been told...