The call came after midnight.

It wasn't delivered by a servant.

It wasn't written down.

It arrived as a certainty.

Callie felt it seep into her bones as she lay awake on the narrow bed in the servants' wing, staring at the ceiling as the shadows shifted with the slow passage of the moon. Her body had been restless for hours: skin too sensitive, breathing too shallow, thoughts returning to Darian with humiliating inevitability.

When the door opened, she didn't flinch.

She rose silently, al