He wears the mask of loyalty, but his heart is fracturing behind it. Malcolm Wells knows the rules of his father's empire: obey, succeed, survive. But when Flora, a sharp-tongued servant, refuses to bow to those same rules, she forces Malcolm to confront the cracks in his gilded prison. As rebellion simmers beneath the frost of Midwinter, Malcolm must decide whether to uphold his family's legacy of influence and cruelty or risk everything to defy it. The ice is breaking, and everything Malcolm thought he knew about loyalty, power, and freedom is about to shatter.