In the hush of nightfall, beneath a sky heavy with stars and secrets, two figures cloaked in shadow crept onto the secluded estate of a baron just south of the capital. The taller one, masked and silent, had done his homework. He knew the baron had lately taken to sleeping not in their matrimonial bedroom, but in the quaint cottage tucked behind the main house—a gift for his newest mistress, a woman half his age with ambition in her eyes and gossip at her mouth.
They moved like phantoms, slipping through the garden with the practiced grace of seasoned thieves—bodies low, footsteps light.
Inside the cottage, the baron lay tangled in sheets with his mistress, her limbs draped over his bulk like ivy over a crumbling statue. For a moment, Kasmeri froze in the shadows of the doorway. The memory of fire—the blaze that consumed his stepfather's home—flickered in his mind, hungry and bright. He had come here to exact his revenge in the same manner.
But something in him hesitated.
