Favored

Princess Holland knew what men saw when they looked at her. She knew they couldn't see what lay beneath the beauty they favored. Something had died inside her long before the night that changed her life forever.

The rage and sinister creativity that once ruled Slayte Miltiades was favored by those who had created him. That favor set him apart from the men he loved like brothers and connected him with the monsters he came to loathe. Those monsters moved among cultured circles, gained admittance to inner sanctums until they could strike quietly-savagely.

Slayte was no longer part of that depraved world, but one never truly walked away. One never truly escaped the ghosts. Slayte embraced his ghosts just enough to keep them appeased. Then Prin Holland came into his world, and the ghosts were no longer meant to be embraced but destroyed.