POV: Evangeline Ashford
Timeline: Day 0 – The End and the Beginning
The scaffold smelled of old blood and fresh rain.
Evangeline stood in the crowd, her threadbare cloak doing nothing against the autumn chill that seeped into her bones—or perhaps that was just death, approaching on schedule. Around her, the citizens of Valcrest pressed close, their faces eager for the spectacle. They always were. Public executions drew crowds like feast days, and this one promised particular entertainment.
The execution of Duke Cassian Thornwell, the King's former right hand, the man who had orchestrated the destruction of House Ashford five years ago.
She should have felt something. Triumph, perhaps. Vindication. After all, she'd spent what remained of her shattered life feeding information to his enemies, whispering poison in the right ears, watching his empire crumble from the shadows. This moment was supposed to be her victory.
Instead, she felt only the hollow ache of her failing body and the bitter knowledge that revenge had cost her everything and tasted like ash.
"They say he's maintained his innocence to the end," the woman beside her whispered, eyes bright with ghoulish interest. "Claims he was framed by the Everhart faction."
Evangeline said nothing. Her lungs rattled with each breath—the consumption that had been eating her alive for months would finish its work soon, probably before winter. She'd avoided the physicians, what few would treat someone of her station now. What was the point? Her family was gone. Her name was worthless. And in moments, the man who'd destroyed it all would die.
It should have been enough.
The crowd's murmur shifted to a roar as guards led Cassian Thornwell up the scaffold steps. Even now, even broken, he moved with that same predatory grace she remembered from the ballrooms and throne rooms where he'd once ruled. His black hair was longer than fashion dictated, his face thinner, but those steel-gray eyes still held that terrible intelligence.
Their gazes met across the crowd.
Impossible. He couldn't see her, not in this press of bodies, not when she was nothing but another anonymous face in a sea of the lowborn. Yet for a heartbeat, she could have sworn those cold eyes found hers, held them, recognized something.
Then the moment passed. The executioner read the charges—treason, conspiracy, the murder of Crown Prince Leopold. All lies, Evangeline knew now. The same lies that had been used to destroy her father, repackaged for a new victim. She'd helped spread them, fed them to Princess Seraphina and Marquess Everhart, never questioning why they wanted Cassian destroyed.
Never wondering if perhaps she'd been a pawn in a larger game.
The ax fell.
The crowd roared.
Evangeline turned away, tasting bile and blood—she'd bitten her tongue without realizing. She pushed through the press of bodies, needing air, needing space, needing—
Her legs buckled.
She caught herself against a wall, her vision swimming. The cough that tore through her brought up blood this time, dark and thick. Around her, people edged away, recognizing the signs of plague or consumption, unwilling to risk contamination.
Good. Let them leave her alone. Let her die here in this alley, unnamed and unmourned, just another victim of the capital's cruelty.
Is this really how it ends?
The thought came unbidden, in a voice that sounded like her mother's. Gentle. Disappointed.
Her mother, who'd thrown herself from the manor tower when the madness became too much. Her brother Thomas, dead of fever in the slums because they couldn't afford a physician. Her father, hanged for treason he didn't commit, his name blackened beyond redemption.
All of them gone. All because of—
But was it really him?
The doubt had been growing for months, fed by fragments of overheard conversations, inconsistencies in the official story, the way Marquess Everhart's star had risen so conveniently in the aftermath of both House Ashford's destruction and now Cassian Thornwell's fall.
"It doesn't matter," she whispered to the empty alley. "It's over."
Her vision darkened at the edges. The cobblestones felt cold against her cheek—when had she fallen? The pain in her chest was fading now, replaced by a curious numbness that spread through her limbs like frost.
If I could do it again, she thought as darkness claimed her, I would be smarter. I would see the truth. I would—
—Evangeline.
The voice cut through the void like a blade through silk.
Open your eyes.
She didn't want to. There was peace in the darkness, an absence of pain she hadn't felt in years. But the voice was insistent, familiar in a way she couldn't place.
You have a choice to make.
"I'm dead." Her voice sounded strange, distant. "Leave me alone."
Are you? A pause, weighted with something that might have been amusement. Look.
Against her will, her eyes opened.
She stood in a place that was nowhere—a gray expanse without horizon or sky, lit by sourceless light. Before her stood a woman, or perhaps the idea of a woman, her features shifting too quickly to focus on. One moment old, the next young, a thousand faces flowing into one another like water.
"What is this?" Evangeline heard herself ask.
"A crossroads." The woman's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "Your life has ended. The path forward is clear—eternal rest, the reward of the weary." She gestured, and Evangeline saw it: a doorway of soft light, promising peace, oblivion, an end to all struggle.
Everything she'd thought she wanted.
"However." The woman turned, and another door appeared, this one darker, thrumming with barely contained energy. "There is another way. To return. To begin again with the knowledge you carry now."
Evangeline's heart—did she have a heart here?—stuttered. "Return? To what?"
"To five years before your father's execution. To the moment when all could still be changed." The woman stepped closer, and for an instant her face was clear: ancient beyond measure, sad beyond words. "But understand this—the river of fate does not take kindly to those who swim against it. The path will be harder than you imagine. The truths you discover may break you more thoroughly than any scaffold. And the cost..." She trailed off meaningfully.
"What cost?"
"That remains to be seen. Fate has a way of balancing its scales." The woman gestured to both doors. "Choose. Peace and rest, or struggle and uncertainty. But choose now. This offer will not come again."
Evangeline looked at the door of light. Rest. Peace. An end to the pain, the rage, the bitter knowledge of all she'd lost. It would be so easy to step through, to let go, to accept that some things couldn't be changed.
Her mother's face flashed through her mind. Thomas's laugh. Her father's gentle hands as he'd taught her to dance, stepping on her toes while she giggled.
Then another memory: Cassian Thornwell's eyes meeting hers across the crowd. That moment of recognition, of something she couldn't name.
What if I was wrong?
"I choose to return." The words left her before she'd fully formed the thought.
The woman smiled, and it was terrible and beautiful. "Then return you shall. But remember, child—knowledge is not wisdom, and vengeance is not justice. The game you're about to play has more pieces than you know."
She touched Evangeline's forehead, and reality shattered.
Evangeline woke to silk sheets and morning light.
For a moment she simply lay there, disoriented, her mind still caught between the gray nowhere and the cold alley where she'd died. Then sensation flooded in: the softness of the mattress beneath her, the weight of her hair—too much hair, clean and brushed—across the pillow, the absence of pain in her chest when she breathed.
She sat up so fast her vision swam.
Her hands. She stared at her hands. Smooth, unmarked by the scars and calluses of her last years. The fingers that had been twisted with early arthritis were straight and young. She pressed them to her face, felt smooth skin instead of the gaunt hollows she'd worn like a mask.
"No," she whispered. "No, it's not—it can't be—"
But it was.
She threw off the covers and stumbled to the mirror on the far wall, and the face that stared back at her stole her breath.
Eighteen. She was eighteen again.
Her reflection showed the girl she'd been before the fall—auburn hair still rich and lustrous, green eyes bright and clear, cheeks full with youth instead of hollowed by starvation. Even the small scar she'd gotten from a riding accident at nineteen was gone.
Five years. She'd gone back five years.
A knock at the door made her spin around, heart hammering.
"Miss Evangeline?" Helena's voice, young and uncertain. Helena, who would remain loyal to the bitter end, who would hold Thomas as he died of fever, who deserved so much better than the fate Evangeline's family had given her. "Are you awake? Your mother wishes to see you before breakfast."
Her mother.
Alive.
Evangeline's throat closed. She tried to speak, failed, tried again. "I'll—I'll be down shortly."
"Very good, miss."
Footsteps retreated down the hall.
Evangeline sank onto the edge of the bed, trembling. It was real. Impossible, but real. She was here, in Ashford Manor, five years before the execution that would destroy her family. Five years before—
The date. She needed to know the date.
She crossed to her writing desk—her writing desk, in her room, in her father's house—and found her journal lying open. Her own handwriting, younger and rounder than it would become, stared up at her.
17th of Autumn's Descent, Year 1247
Six weeks. In six weeks, her father would be summoned to the capital to answer questions about the northern border disputes. Two months after that, the accusations would begin. Three months, and he would be arrested. Four months, and he would be dead.
Unless she stopped it.
Unless she changed everything.
Evangeline pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting the sob that wanted to tear free. She'd been given a gift she didn't deserve—a second chance, a new game, all the pieces reset on the board. But this time she knew the rules. This time she wouldn't be the naive girl who trusted that justice would prevail.
This time, she would be the player, not the piece.
And it started with Duke Cassian Thornwell.
In her first life, she hadn't met him until after her father's execution, at a court function where he'd looked through her like she didn't exist. But she'd learned later—too late—that he'd been her father's primary accuser, the one who'd presented evidence of treason to the king, the architect of their destruction.
Or so she'd believed.
Now, with the gray-eyed woman's warning echoing in her mind, she had to know the truth. And there was only one way to find it.
She would have to get close to him. Closer than close. She would infiltrate his world, learn his secrets, earn his trust.
Seduce the man who'd destroyed her family.
And if he truly was guilty? Then she would destroy him from within, the way he'd done to her. She would make him care, make him need her, and then she would take everything from him just as he'd taken everything from her.
But if he wasn't...
Evangeline pushed the thought away. She couldn't afford doubt. Not yet. First, she had to survive. Had to save her family. Had to navigate the treacherous waters of court politics with five years of bitter knowledge as her compass.
She stood, squaring her shoulders, meeting her reflection's eyes.
The girl who'd died in that alley was gone. In her place stood someone harder, colder, more dangerous.
Someone who knew exactly how the game was played.
And this time, she intended to win.