“The slipper wasn’t a leash on me,” Ella said, stepping past him toward the newly revealed door at the end of the hall—a door that led not to the garden, but to a forest drenched in real moonlight. “It was a leash on you . Without it, you’re just a man in a pretty coat.”

“You gave me a cage with a chandelier,” she said without looking back. “I’d rather have dirty feet and a door that opens.”

The west parlor was lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Reinhard stood in the center, tall and impossibly handsome, his smile a blade wrapped in velvet. At his feet lay a box wrapped in black ribbon.