The silence that followed the explosion was louder than the blast itself. Smoke coiled in the shattered ruins of the throne room, the scent of scorched velvet and blood hanging thick in the air. Cambria's ears rang her vision a smear of firelight and shadows. Somewhere in the distance, a scream echoed a woman's voice, raw with grief and rage.
She pushed herself off the marble floor, her hand trembling as it brushed against a cracked tile slick with blood. Evelyn's blood.
But Evelyn was gone.
Not dead. Not this time. The message had been clear the suicide was a ruse, a staged illusion meant to buy time, to distract. Someone else had helped her disappear. And now, Cambria was alone again in a palace full of ghosts.
Lucien's voice still haunted her, echoing from the moments before the explosion. "You are the weapon, Cambria. Project Pandora is you."
Her pulse thundered.
