“I no longer want you.”

Emperor Richard de Tristaine recoiled from her chilling words.

“You don’t mean that,” he muttered bitterly through clenched teeth.

Jovine could almost feel pity for his pained assertion, but her momentary falter flickered away as quickly as his fidelity had.

How many months had she endured his neglect, his humiliation, the heartache as he found company in the arms of another woman?

She was done with it all. Done with him.

“I mean every word, Your Majesty”

“Jovine,” he said, his voice a warning, his face flushed in anger.

She stared at him with vacant eyes, no longer moved by his offense. He expected her to cower in fear, afraid of displeasing the man she loved.

Not anymore.

Could he not see that she had already departed?

“Yes, Richard?”

Surprise flitted across his eyes. It had been long since she called him by name. When was the last time? Their wedding night, when it escaped her lips during the throes of ecstasy? Or the moments they shared at the beginning when he was kind and adoring?

A sharp stab of pain spasmed in her chest at the thought of their fleeting bliss. They could have been happy together. He could have been so loved, so cherished, so preciously regarded.

But he forsook her. He left her behind for a woman intent on shattering their marriage.

Left speechless, the Emperor had no fitting words for his wife. Jovine internally scoffed at the sight. “If there’s nothing else, I shall take my leave.”

Without another glance, she turned away from him.

As she approached the waiting door, a harsh grip at her elbow yanked her back into a solid chest. The heat of his body surrounded her and a thundering rhythm of panicked heartbeats echoed in her eardrums.

“Why are you doing this?” Richard breathed into her hair.

Jovine froze at the question. Why am I doing this?

She seethed in rage, her fury bubbling through her veins. How dare he ask that? How dare he, after all he’d done to her?

Even now, it was imprinted into the edges of her crumbling mind—the image of him caressing that treacherous woman as a pool of her own blood seeped into the sheets of his affair. Before the darkness had claimed her, the last thing she saw was her husband locked in a sordid embrace with the very mistress who drove a dagger through her heart.

She had died. And now she was back.

Back in time.

“Why am I doing this?” she darkly repeated. “I buried you, Richard. I mourned my husband who never came back, so why would I want, why would I feel anything for the shell of the man.”

His sharp intake of breath only fueled the revulsion burning in her chest.

Turning her head, she met his horrified eyes. “What’s the matter? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“I never wanted this,” he replied in a shaking voice.

Narrowing her eyes, she shook off his touch. When he reached out a pleading hand, she evaded it with a sneer. “Don’t touch me, Richard. It disgusts me.”

Agony bloomed on his face. “Jovine, please —”

She walked away from him, ignoring his tortured shouts as he desperately called out to her.

Does it hurt, Your Majesty? she thought to herself. This is only the beginning.

By some trick of fate, she had awakened in the past, and this time, she would keep her life and reap calamity.

Crocodile tears and belated regret meant nothing to her.

I will break you. Ruin you. Subdue the fire in your eyes along with your little red-haired mistress.

Empress Jovine clenched her fists.

I will be your undoing, Richard de Tristaine.

I will rage.

I will devastate.

And I will revel in it.