Liliana POV
I still hadn’t pulled a straight answer out of Jaxen about when—or if—he’d make me the next Mrs. Hale.
Every second from the party two nights ago kept looping in my head: the way he barely looked at me, the quick sidesteps, the cold distance that crushed what little confidence I had left. How the hell had I let myself become the side piece? I was supposed to be the one on his arm, head held high, owning the room as Mrs. Hale, not some desperate girl begging for scraps.
The worst part? Nobody knew the truth.
The so-called Ashford heiress was just a charity case—an orphan they’d taken in.
A few years back, overseas, my phone rang, and the voice on the other end delivered the gut punch: I wasn’t blood. The “love” they’d shown me was all for show, like keeping a pretty bird
