"L… Lady Catherine as well…?" The Duke's voice cracked through the chamber, edged with awe, suspicion, and the faintest tremor of dread.
Aiden nodded once. His jaw tightened, teeth grinding against the pressure of his own gamble. He could feel the fire at his back, licking close—too close. He was playing with it now, tossing sparks into a chamber soaked in oil. One misstep, one wrong breath, and the inferno would consume him.
But gods, what a chance this was. And chances like this came once in a lifetime—if at all.
It had not been certainty that drove his whisper, only a sharpened guess. A gambit. He remembered the Duke's words: ambitious. Yes, that was what he had been called. Ambitious, reckless, hungry. Perhaps this would be the blade that cut or the blade that crowned him.
