Page 84 of Wicked Salvation

EDEN

The room doesn’t just buzz—it crackles

It snaps like brittle glass beneath stilettos, sharp and sudden. The chandeliers above us flicker, casting prismatic shards of light across the marble floor.

It hits me first in the chest, like a punch beneath my ribs.

Then it’s burning my throat, coiling behind my eyes.

Lucian.

He didn’t justruinmy engagement party.

He ruptured it.

I stand there frozen, suspended in time like a snowflake on the edge of a roof. I feel Silas beside me, but the whole world is blurring before my eyes. My smile, thin and aching, lingers like that last breath you take before drowning—and I’m going under,quickly.

Count Wessex fumbles that mic back to his lips, stammering into the stunned silence in the crowd. Whispers and murmurs rip through the crowd, disbelief burning every tongue.

I can’t move.

I can’t breathe.

Lucian’s voice loops in my mind—each word polished, deliberate, merciless.

He carved me right open.

I want to hide.

I want to scream.

I want to fold myself into something so tiny nobody will ever see me.

But I can’t.

I’m caught in the storm Lucian Augustine-Beaumont created. A storm draped in silk, a ghost reborn. The man who once held my heart in the palm of his hand crushed it with the same grace he used to kiss my thighs that night.

My hand trembles.

Silas’ grip hardens, forcing me back into reality.

“Smile, Eden,” Silas hisses, his breath sharp against my ear. “We’ll fix this.”

Something inside me tears.

I grab my hand back from him.

“What are you doing?” His face is red from embarrassment, the humiliation suffocating every bit of composure out of him. Sweat beads by his brow, a vein popping out.

It’s like scales have fallen from my eyes and I’m seeing him for the first time, and our relationship plays before me like a highlight reel—everything that’s happened from the moment I laid eyes on him on campus.

The realization starts with his voice. The way it wraps around my name like a leash. The way he says ours when he means mine. The way every promise he ever made sounds suddenly hollow, pre-scripted, designed to pacify, not protect.

Then it’s the way he touches me. Too tight. Too possessive. Like I’m something borrowed that he’s terrified to lose, not someone loved. I remember the bruises, the aches, the pains, theblood.

The way I apologized for him hurting me.

Lastly, his smile.