Summary

Declared dead and stripped of her name, Katrina Mormont survives a decade of brutal servitude under her stepmother’s cruelty. When she learns her virginity is to be sold, Katrina escapes into the night, carrying nothing but rage, wit, and the memory of her father’s stolen legacy. Her flight leads her to Edgemond, a struggling silver mining town ruled by Lord Callum Blackburn—a war-forged general elevated to nobility by a grateful king and tasked with resurrecting failing mines that may decide the kingdom’s future. Katrina secures refuge in his household as a servant, hiding her lineage and her hunger for justice. Katrina secretly tracks the mines’ progress and feeds information to her father’s banker, who has saved a sliver of her inheritance - a stake in the mines. She walks a razor’s edge between survival and discovery. Callum, honorable yet dangerously curious, finds himself drawn to the sharp-eyed servant who smiles like someone who has known both grace and ruin. With silver veins dwindling and the king demanding results, Katrina must decide whether to risk her growing feelings for the lord who could unknowingly restore her fortune—or destroy her carefully laid revenge. In a world where power is mined from stone and secrets, vengeance may prove more precious than silver.

Prologue

Running.

The trees whipped past in a green blur as Katrina's eyes were fixed on the uneven ground ahead. A single misstep would mean capture, and capture meant a fate worse than death.

She’d rather die than let them take her alive.

She cursed herself for forgetting her dagger in her rush to flee—at least then, if she couldn’t fight, she could end herself before her stepmother profited from her.

Lady Odessa Trevil had squandered her inheritance long ago, selling anything of value of Katrina’s to fund her idle pleasures. Her two daughters, Celeste and Crystina, were vain, dull, and—despite their efforts—utterly without charm. As the years passed, it became increasingly costly to maintain Lady Trevil’s extravagant lifestyle. Her hope in landing her daughters a profitable marriage soon evaporated; instead, she watched Katrina effortlessly draw the attention she craved for her own children.

Knowing Katrina's own marriage would only spell disaster for her, there was only one solution to Odessa's problem: remove the competition entirely.

And she didn’t simply remove her—she erased her.

Katrina was declared dead, mourned in a small, hollow ceremony, and stripped from every record. Her inheritance—Lord Frederik Mormont’s estate and profitable silver mine investments—was claimed by Odessa. The girl herself was condemned to servitude under Aldrich Grin, a sadistic overseer, until her stepmother decided to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.

It was the final straw.

Rain lashed her skin, sharp branches clawing at her arms and face. Her bare feet—she hadn’t owned shoes in years—made no sound on the sodden earth. At twenty-five, she had been worked to the bone every day since her father’s death a decade ago, shackled in her room each night like a prisoner.

Now, after setting her ancestral home on fire and slipping into the storm-dark woods, she knew there would be no second chances.

She would run until her lungs burned, until her feet bled, until hunger and exhaustion dragged her to the ground—but she would not stop until Springbourne, Odessa, and all her schemes were far behind her.

Katrina was educated, resourceful, and the only true heir to her father’s legacy. Wherever she landed, she would start anew. And when she could, she would return to take back everything her stepmother had stolen. Repay every injustice in full.

Every waking moment from now until her last breath would be dedicated to revenge.

Until fate brought her to the most feared and celebrated general of their time: Lord Callum Blackburn.