Bloody Debt

To save her family from the king's dungeons, Elara married the Lord Regent, Damien Vaughn, the most feared man in the realm. But the royal decree he carried the next morning ordered House Sutton slaughtered, and for five years he has kept her locked away, blaming her father's betrayal for the butchery of his own kin. Blood owed, paid in blood.

When Liana miscarries, Damien needs no proof to name Elara guilty. He forces a barren-womb draught down her throat, and the child she carried for seven months is torn from her body. Still she endures, bound by a promise made to her mother in a cold dungeon: live five years, and only then may she seek the shores of the afterlife.

Now five days remain. When Liana orders the back garden dug up, where Elara buried her child, grief and rage finally break her silence.