Chapter 27 The Nightmare's Echo

But that beautiful, fragile trust was violently shattered into a million pieces one rainy night, when Lyra unexpectedly pushed open the heavy oak doors to her husband's private chambers.
She witnessed, with her own horrified eyes, Cecilia locked in a passionate, heated embrace with Rex. The Duke was kissing the servant girl without a single shred of hesitation. And when his dark, predatory gaze lazily opened to meet Lyra's paralyzed form standing in the doorway, he did not pull away. Instead, he deepened the kiss, staring directly into his wife's eyes as if laying down a cruel, deliberate challenge.
Outside of her betrayal, Cecilia had always maintained a deeply complicated, tense relationship with her stepfather, a lowly laborer on the castle grounds. Yet, following the horrific, bloody tragedy of her father's stabbing, the mourning maid hastily packed her meager belongings and fled back to the city of Eldenere.