Born with both blessings and misfortune, life had always been simple and clear for Duke Lennox Carlisle of the North. Life and death. Black and white. Take what he wanted, discard what had no use. The woman who had come to him seven years ago—offering herself as a contractual lover in exchange for vengeance against her parents’ murderers—was no exception. “Because… I fell in love at first sight.” It was a satisfying bargain. Juliet Monad—clever, secretive, and sharp-witted. A convenient relationship, one he could sever at any moment once the childish game of playing lovers grew dull. At least, that’s what he believed. “I want to stop now. I don’t love you anymore.” The woman who once clung to him with a face serene as winter and warm as spring, confessed her farewell instead, stabbing him with the sharpest blade before running away. For Juliet Monad, the fallen earl’s daughter and the duke’s foolish, short-lived lover, life had always been fair yet cruel. It was as if fate granted her a second life, yet denied her the chance to change anything. The baby she never held, the parents she couldn’t save. Her first love—arrogant like summer and cruel like autumn— a man who, this time as well, would eventually forget her forever. Standing before a locked door, Juliet thought: The key in her hand was small and shabby, and the sturdy door before her would never open. If she couldn’t escape her destined fate no matter how much she struggled—what was she to do? Juliet made a proposal to the man who had once been her first love. “Help me avenge them, and I’ll give you what you desire.” Rather than be deceived and discarded again, this time she would use him, and let herself be used— only to end the relationship on her own terms first. On the seventh year since she abandoned her contractual lover and fled, at the end of a pursuit burning with cold misunderstandings and betrayal, Juliet heard—for the very first time—the sound of fate’s unyielding chains beginning to crack. “You lost, Juliet. So give it up.” “If you wanted to run, you shouldn’t have let it slip that you were carrying my child.” The door opened, and the secret was exposed. From the storm stirred by a butterfly’s wings, a long-awaited promise—and revenge—at last began