Few things were Sumadara Kyrie’s alone, and fewer still she didn’t fight for. Her inheritance was long days hunched in the tea room, studying ceremony and the tools of torture; it was blood and duty and betrothal to a man she knew nothing about except the logic they made on paper.

So when her heart seized on someone for herself, she threw away the Sumadera name without a second thought — it was nothing of hers, she would be all his, and she refused to share.