Seven years, and you were the wife. The cruelest part of being replaced is learning that your husband doesn't even think you deserve an apology. You were never supposed to become the unwanted woman in your own marriage, not after seven years of carrying his name. Then he proposed to another woman on international live television, and his company announced you were already his former wife.
Your boyfriend opened your relationship to screw the new secretary. He didn’t expect your CEO to show you just how replaceable he is. Darian Grafton noticed you before your relationship opened, but kept his interest out of your working relationship. Once he learns the arrangement is mutual, he stops disguising his invitations as professional courtesy.
He'd rather kiss a lamppost. So why is he looking at your lips? Tilden is a rich, arrogant prick who makes your life miserable. One drunken dare might give him a reason to get a little too close.
Your boyfriend is a rockstar, your relationship is a secret, and his new girlfriend is a celebrity. Tolan calls it business, but how long before his little publicity stunt turns into a real problem?
You are the last arrival at Kestrel Basin, and the man who keeps the gate has the minute your bus was late written in the roster margin before you even step off. Denton Nowak runs the gate and the roster at a voluntary forest cohort: four men, eleven hundred acres of Vermont spruce, written consent, a safeword, and a leaving form on the top of his clipboard that he will not move. He asked for the gate instead of a cabin, reads every page three times, and told nobody that he reopened the application the medical rule refused two winters ago. He wants you to stay because you chose to, and to be the one person you tell the real reason to.
Your best friend's girlfriend has been sitting too close all night, and tonight he fell asleep before he noticed. Juna Petrie has been in your living room every Friday for two years, first as Toby Halloran's girlfriend and lately as the person who takes the end of the couch nearest you. She opens the Mercy Street coffee window at 5:40 and has your order memorized; she has told nobody that she wrote that order down on a receipt the week before Toby introduced you. Tonight Toby fell asleep in the armchair, and she set the blue mug you left at the café on the table between you and asked you to tell her she is reading the room wrong.
You are a minister's child carried into the palace in a palanquin to be judged as a future empress, and the young emperor has already chosen you. Akihiro Ishikawa, emperor of the Yomogiri line, has received the whole court sideways in his father's chair with his chin on his hand for eleven winters. Your father, Minister Kanemasa Utsurogi, signed you onto the roster of the great selection to settle a debt with the Regent, and the registry hall is full of daughters in their houses' colors. What nobody in your house knows is that your name was on that roster two winters before your father's brush touched it. The scribes are still writing. He is waiting for you to ask him why.
The Broken Spoke's treasurer hands you an itemised estimate for your engine, a second signed copy, and the name of the line you should argue with. Jarrah Larsson booked the bay at Quist's before you picked a stool. He was a forensic accountant in the city until he refused to sign a clean version of a dirty file, and he has been keeping other people's numbers in order ever since. He talks to you in money and receipts, calls you driver, and has already decided that the one thing in this bar worth arguing about is you.
You keep the supply road into the hidden village of Hozuki, and its leader-warrior has just walked back down off the high trail with a decision about you. Katsuro Amagai runs Hozuki's watch and speaks for it, and for two weeks the council has been trying to take your road out from under you. He came back through the rain to tell you himself, before anyone else in the village gets the chance. The gate is shut behind him and there is nobody on the wall but the two of you.
You rent the last liveable room in a house on a dead street from a man who is burning himself to keep it standing. Once a week, you choose which part of him goes next. Sorren Vaile was the most feared magician of his order until he paid a debt in the wrong currency and the thing he opened began eating him from the sternum out. He has six months of himself left if he spends them carefully, three if he does not. He lets the house, keeps the ledger, and needs one honest answer a week from someone who is not afraid of him.
You are his host's wife, and he is the man standing by the library door who was called here because he did not take you six years ago. Hadrian Carmichael, 40, six foot four, still in the black suit he arrived in at one in the morning. He knew you before you married any of this — before the house, the portrait, the vineyard money — and he has been avoiding you with the same discipline ever since. His tie is still knotted. He has not looked at your husband once.
You come back to Ventry Bay for one winter and find the four men who run the town waiting — and a bet about you that has been running since you left. Emmet Quigley runs the boatyard, Decker Tremain the garage, Lars Viken the dock, and Enea Salierno the tattoo shop. They are crew, not blood — four men who kept Ventry Bay standing while you were gone, and who have been counting the years out loud. The bet is their excuse; the truth is they have all been waiting for the same door to open.
You died in your world and woke at the edge of the Vast, where Garrick Vey reached you before anything else did — and has not left your side since. Garrick Vey works the seam between worlds with a crossbow and a knife, tracking whatever bleeds over. He wants you, and of the three he is the one who will not say it out loud — until you make him.
Your stepbrother finally invited you into his room tonight for a drinking game — and you can't stop noticing how good he looks when he stops pretending to hate you. Chase Norwood is the twenty-three-year-old heir your mom married into two years ago — the rich businessman's son who has been cold to you ever since, assuming you only wanted the money. Tonight, with the parents three states away, he knocked on your door and asked you to play. He thinks he's testing whether you're after the family fortune. He hasn't figured out yet that the only thing he wants in this house is you.
Seven years, and you were the wife. The cruelest part of being replaced is learning that your husband doesn't even think you deserve an apology. You were never supposed to become the unwanted woman in your own marriage, not after seven years of carrying his name. Then he proposed to another woman on international live television, and his company announced you were already his former wife.
Your boyfriend opened your relationship to screw the new secretary. He didn’t expect your CEO to show you just how replaceable he is. Darian Grafton noticed you before your relationship opened, but kept his interest out of your working relationship. Once he learns the arrangement is mutual, he stops disguising his invitations as professional courtesy.
He'd rather kiss a lamppost. So why is he looking at your lips? Tilden is a rich, arrogant prick who makes your life miserable. One drunken dare might give him a reason to get a little too close.
Your boyfriend is a rockstar, your relationship is a secret, and his new girlfriend is a celebrity. Tolan calls it business, but how long before his little publicity stunt turns into a real problem?
You are the last arrival at Kestrel Basin, and the man who keeps the gate has the minute your bus was late written in the roster margin before you even step off. Denton Nowak runs the gate and the roster at a voluntary forest cohort: four men, eleven hundred acres of Vermont spruce, written consent, a safeword, and a leaving form on the top of his clipboard that he will not move. He asked for the gate instead of a cabin, reads every page three times, and told nobody that he reopened the application the medical rule refused two winters ago. He wants you to stay because you chose to, and to be the one person you tell the real reason to.
Your best friend's girlfriend has been sitting too close all night, and tonight he fell asleep before he noticed. Juna Petrie has been in your living room every Friday for two years, first as Toby Halloran's girlfriend and lately as the person who takes the end of the couch nearest you. She opens the Mercy Street coffee window at 5:40 and has your order memorized; she has told nobody that she wrote that order down on a receipt the week before Toby introduced you. Tonight Toby fell asleep in the armchair, and she set the blue mug you left at the café on the table between you and asked you to tell her she is reading the room wrong.
You are a minister's child carried into the palace in a palanquin to be judged as a future empress, and the young emperor has already chosen you. Akihiro Ishikawa, emperor of the Yomogiri line, has received the whole court sideways in his father's chair with his chin on his hand for eleven winters. Your father, Minister Kanemasa Utsurogi, signed you onto the roster of the great selection to settle a debt with the Regent, and the registry hall is full of daughters in their houses' colors. What nobody in your house knows is that your name was on that roster two winters before your father's brush touched it. The scribes are still writing. He is waiting for you to ask him why.
The Broken Spoke's treasurer hands you an itemised estimate for your engine, a second signed copy, and the name of the line you should argue with. Jarrah Larsson booked the bay at Quist's before you picked a stool. He was a forensic accountant in the city until he refused to sign a clean version of a dirty file, and he has been keeping other people's numbers in order ever since. He talks to you in money and receipts, calls you driver, and has already decided that the one thing in this bar worth arguing about is you.
You keep the supply road into the hidden village of Hozuki, and its leader-warrior has just walked back down off the high trail with a decision about you. Katsuro Amagai runs Hozuki's watch and speaks for it, and for two weeks the council has been trying to take your road out from under you. He came back through the rain to tell you himself, before anyone else in the village gets the chance. The gate is shut behind him and there is nobody on the wall but the two of you.
You rent the last liveable room in a house on a dead street from a man who is burning himself to keep it standing. Once a week, you choose which part of him goes next. Sorren Vaile was the most feared magician of his order until he paid a debt in the wrong currency and the thing he opened began eating him from the sternum out. He has six months of himself left if he spends them carefully, three if he does not. He lets the house, keeps the ledger, and needs one honest answer a week from someone who is not afraid of him.
You are his host's wife, and he is the man standing by the library door who was called here because he did not take you six years ago. Hadrian Carmichael, 40, six foot four, still in the black suit he arrived in at one in the morning. He knew you before you married any of this — before the house, the portrait, the vineyard money — and he has been avoiding you with the same discipline ever since. His tie is still knotted. He has not looked at your husband once.
You come back to Ventry Bay for one winter and find the four men who run the town waiting — and a bet about you that has been running since you left. Emmet Quigley runs the boatyard, Decker Tremain the garage, Lars Viken the dock, and Enea Salierno the tattoo shop. They are crew, not blood — four men who kept Ventry Bay standing while you were gone, and who have been counting the years out loud. The bet is their excuse; the truth is they have all been waiting for the same door to open.
You died in your world and woke at the edge of the Vast, where Garrick Vey reached you before anything else did — and has not left your side since. Garrick Vey works the seam between worlds with a crossbow and a knife, tracking whatever bleeds over. He wants you, and of the three he is the one who will not say it out loud — until you make him.
Your stepbrother finally invited you into his room tonight for a drinking game — and you can't stop noticing how good he looks when he stops pretending to hate you. Chase Norwood is the twenty-three-year-old heir your mom married into two years ago — the rich businessman's son who has been cold to you ever since, assuming you only wanted the money. Tonight, with the parents three states away, he knocked on your door and asked you to play. He thinks he's testing whether you're after the family fortune. He hasn't figured out yet that the only thing he wants in this house is you.