CHAPTER 217: SPARING YOUR SCARS.

That night, the Blackthorne manor was wrapped in uneasy silence. The flickering glow of lanterns painted long, restless shadows across the walls.

Liora sat at a low table in her chamber, fingers hovering over a parchment she had yet to mark. Her thoughts refused to settle,images of Darius’s smirk, the weight of a hundred noble eyes, the queen dowager’s decree. Tomorrow, the Trials would strip away masks, and she feared what would remain exposed.

The door creaked. She looked up.

Lucien entered without ceremony, his cloak damp from the mist outside. His expression was severe, though his eyes lingered on her longer than usual, as if gauging whether she had broken under the day’s events.

"You should rest," he said.

Liora let out a humorless laugh. "Rest? While the court sharpens blades behind our backs?"

He didn’t answer immediately, only moved closer, placing a sealed scroll on the table between them. The wax bore the Blackthorne crest.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Records," Lucien replied, his tone clipped. "Darius has been stirring the nobles for months. Whispers, alliances, debts called in. These documents hold proof of the strings he’s been pulling. If tomorrow is to be more than a farce, you need to know what weapons you face."

Liora’s breath caught. She traced the seal with her fingertip but did not break it yet. Instead, her eyes lifted to his. "You trust me with this?"

A pause. His jaw tightened, as though he warred with the very act of giving her truth. "Trust is not a luxury we can afford to withhold. If you falter tomorrow, they will not just come for me. They will come for you."

His words struck deeper than he intended.

"I know," she whispered. "But what if I’m not enough?"

For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them. Then Lucien leaned closer, his voice low, steady. "Then I will make you enough."

The weight of his promise pressed into the air, heavier than the silence of the manor.

Before she could respond, a knock broke the moment. Rowan entered, bowing briefly. "My lord, scouts report movements near the western quarter. Cloaked figures. Could be Darius’s men, or worse."

Lucien straightened, mask sliding back into place. "Double the watch. No one enters or leaves without my order."

Rowan nodded and vanished, the door shutting behind him.

Liora’s gaze returned to Lucien. The questions burned at her lips, about his enemies, about the truth behind his disgrace, about the secrets still hidden. But she swallowed them. For now.

Instead, she broke the wax seal. The parchment unfurled, and the candlelight revealed names,powerful names,tied to debts, betrayals, and blood.

Her hands trembled. "This... this could ruin them."

Lucien’s eyes glinted, dark and dangerous. "It will. If we survive the Trials."

Outside, the night deepened, but within the manor, war had already begun.

The manor slept, but not in peace.

Somewhere in the deep hours before dawn, the hush of the halls broke with the faint creak of wood. Liora stirred, sitting upright on her bed. The candles had long burned out, yet her chest tightened with a certainty that someone else was there.

She slipped silently from her sheets, fingers grazing the cool metal of the dagger Lucien had insisted she keep nearby.

The sound came again, footsteps, deliberate, soft, moving toward her chamber door.

Before she could decide whether to call out, the door swung inward.

A shadow slipped inside.

"Liora," a voice hissed.

She froze. Recognition halted the blade in her hand. "Rowan?"

He closed the door behind him, features grim, cloak damp with night mist. "Forgive me, my lady, but I could not wait until morning. You need to see this."

From within his cloak, Rowan drew a folded parchment, smaller and more hastily bound than the scroll Lucien had given her earlier. He set it on the table, gesturing urgently.

Liora’s heart raced as she unfolded it. The ink was rushed, the handwriting not Rowan’s. Names. Places. Dates.

Her blood chilled.

It was a ledger of payments, bribes given to mercenaries, spies planted in the palace... and at the very end, her parents’ names.

Rowan’s voice was low, tight. "This was taken from one of Darius’s men. It suggests your parents’ deaths were not an accident of war, nor the chaos of rebellion. They were marked."

Her throat constricted. "Marked... by who?"

Rowan’s silence was its own answer.

Her gaze shot up, meeting his. "Lucien."

But Rowan didn’t nod. He didn’t deny either. "Tomorrow, everything will come to light. And when it does... you must decide whether you stand with him, or against him."

The room seemed to tilt around her.

Behind them, the door clicked again.

Lucien stood in the threshold, his figure tall, still, carved from fury and shadow. His eyes locked on Rowan, then shifted to the parchment in Liora’s trembling hands.

"Rowan," he said, voice like a blade unsheathed, "leave us."

Rowan bowed stiffly, though his eyes lingered on Liora, full of unspoken warning. Then he slipped out, shutting the door behind him.

The silence left in his wake was unbearable.

Liora clutched the parchment, heart hammering. "Lucien..." Her voice broke. "Tell me this isn’t true."

His gaze was unreadable, dark as storm clouds before a tempest. He stepped closer, each word deliberate.

"It is true that your parents were marked." A pause. "But not by me."

The denial was sharp, but the shadows in his eyes betrayed a deeper, heavier truth he still hadn’t spoken.

Liora’s fingers clenched the parchment so tightly the edges cut into her skin. Her voice trembled as she asked, "If not by you, then who?"

Lucien’s silence stretched like a blade drawn across her heart. His shoulders stiffened, the mask he wore threatening to crack. Finally, he exhaled, the sound harsh, resigned.

"Your parents were betrayed from within," he said at last. "Someone close to them, close to the Miral name, handed them to the Crown’s enemies. By the time I learned, it was already too late. And because I was accused of treason, because of the stain on my name, I could do nothing to clear them. The blame fell easily on me."

Liora’s breath caught. Her aunt’s words, her uncle’s cold eyes, the whispers of being a burden, all of it came rushing back. Evelyne and Hector Miral. Could it be...?

She shook her head, unable to form the thought. "Then why didn’t you tell me? Why let me believe...why let them say...you were the cause?"

Lucien’s eyes darkened, a storm raging within them. He stepped closer, his voice low but fierce.

"Because truth is not always a shield. Sometimes it is a weapon...one that can cut down the wrong hands, the wrong hearts, if wielded too soon. I needed you safe, Liora. Not dragged into a web of power and blood you were never meant to see."

Her lips parted, but no words came. Safe? She had felt anything but safe...cast out, whispered about, thrust into his life as a concubine.

"Safe?" she finally managed, her tone breaking between grief and anger. "You call this safety? Being left in the dark while the ghosts of my family haunt me?"

Lucien’s jaw tensed, pain flashing across his expression. He lifted a hand, as if to reach for her, but stopped midway. "I would rather bear your hatred than see you destroyed by the truth before its time."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Liora turned her face away, blinking back tears. "And yet here we are. The truth dripping from Darius’s tongue, from Rowan’s hands, from your silence. Too late for your protection to matter."

The fire in the hearth snapped loudly, the only sound between them.

Then, faintly, a bell tolled from the palace beyond the manor walls....the summons for dawn.

Lucien’s voice dropped, rough with restraint. "The Trials begin today. Whatever doubt you carry, whatever anger burns between us...you must decide where you stand, Liora. By my side... or against me."

Her heart lurched painfully at his words.

And for the first time, she did not know her answer.

The bell’s toll faded into the stillness, but its echo seemed to lodge inside Liora’s chest. She stood frozen, Lucien’s words hanging between them like the edge of a blade.

By his side.

Or against him.

Her hands trembled as she set the parchment back onto the table, though her fingers lingered over it as if the truth might shift if she just held on longer.

"I don’t even know what standing by your side means anymore," she whispered, her voice raw. "You’ve kept me walking blind, Lucien. Every step, every whisper, every glance in the shadows...I’ve been walking in your world without even knowing what ground I stood on."

Lucien’s face tightened, the faintest flicker of guilt surfacing before he buried it beneath his calm. He turned away, pacing toward the window where dawn’s light seeped through the heavy curtains. His silhouette, tall and rigid, looked more like a soldier’s than a prince’s.

"You think I’ve hidden the truth because I doubted you?" His voice was low, carrying a weight that pressed against her ribs. "No. I hid it because the truth is poison in the wrong moment, and we live among serpents who would have used it to destroy us both."

He faced her again, his eyes catching the pale light. "Do you think I wanted this for you? To be dragged into the storm that drowned me? I would have bled a thousand times over if it meant sparing you the same scars."