CHAPTER 12: A FRAYING THREAD

The silence after my words lingered, heavy and brittle. Seraphine’s pallor had not fully left her cheeks. For once, the mask she always wore had cracked, and the room still smelled faintly of the truth it revealed.

Her lips pressed together, slow and deliberate, as if she could rebuild her composure simply by holding her mouth shut. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not with rage but calculation. I had cut a thread she had assumed unbreakable, and now she was studying the ends, wondering how to knot them back together.

"You speak as though you have a choice," she said finally, voice cold, steady. "Engagements between houses are not trinkets to be dropped when the mood strikes. My family’s word binds yours. Your family’s word binds mine."

The tone was sharp, but it lacked the certainty she had walked in with. I heard the faint tremor beneath it. A faltering violin string.

"I’ve made my choice," I answered.

Her amethyst eyes searched me. For weakness. For hesitation. For the old Armand who had adored her attention, craved her approval, let her shape his cruelty into theater. She found something else.

She took a slow breath, smoothed her coat, and stood straighter. Already rebuilding. Already gathering the shattered pieces into another weapon.

"You’ll come to your senses," she said. "When the dust of your little dungeon stunt fades, you’ll remember why you needed me. Why you still need me. Alone, you are reckless. Alone, you waste your talent. With me, you will rise. Without me—" Her pause was perfectly placed. "Without me, you’ll watch your family’s name wither while others climb past."

Her words struck at truths this body remembered. The Valcrey name was powerful still, but not untouchable. Scandals had bitten at it. Failures at court had chipped its shine. Armand’s arrogance had painted targets on its crest. She wasn’t wrong. Alone, House Valcrey might stumble. Together with her? The world might forgive.

But what she didn’t say—the thing that sat in the silence between her sentences—was that her house needed us more.

The Duskveils. Once prominent. Once powerful. Now fading. Their lands dwindled, their coffers thinning. The empire’s eyes had shifted elsewhere. She was the brightest star they had left, burning hard to drag her family back into relevance. And for that, she needed the Valcreys. She needed me.

That truth steadied me more than the Anchor Step ever could.

I leaned back slightly on the bed, meeting her eyes with calm. "You need this bond more than I do."

For the first time, she flinched. Small. A breath caught in her throat. Quickly masked, but seen.

"You overestimate yourself," she replied smoothly, but too quickly.

"No," I said. "I see clearly. Your talent makes you remarkable. But your family wanes. Their debts grow. Their allies thin. You can’t climb without someone’s shoulders under your feet. That’s what I was to you. Shoulders."

Her expression froze. Beautiful, flawless, and suddenly brittle.

I could feel the old Armand inside me then, his emotions like half-forgotten echoes rising up from the marrow. He had loved her. Perhaps not purely, perhaps not wisely, but he had. She had been the only one who praised him without condition, the only one who told him his cruelty was strength, his arrogance destiny. He had taken her approval and worn it like armor. And in return, he had offered her loyalty, devotion, love warped by pride.

It pressed at me now, those leftover feelings in the blood and bones I wore. The way his heart had quickened when she entered a room. The way his thoughts had sharpened when she spoke. The way he had wanted to be the man she believed him to be—even if that man was cruel.

I studied her pale face, her violet eyes burning with the need to regain control. Was it fair to condemn her entirely? She had been raised to see the world as conquest. To her, power was survival. Perhaps she had never been taught any other way to exist.

A question pressed against my thoughts: if I owed anything to the boy whose life I now lived, was it this? To save the woman he loved, even if that love had been a chain?

She turned away first, pacing a few steps, her coat flaring slightly as she moved. She needed the motion to recover, to hide the weakness she’d shown. "You speak boldly," she said, her back to me. "Too boldly. People will wonder if you’ve forgotten your place."

I watched her, the way her fingers curled briefly into fists before smoothing against her sides. She was rattled. That alone was victory. But beneath it, I saw the girl who was fighting not just for dominance, but for relevance, for survival.

When she faced me again, her mask was back in place. Her tone was cool, dismissive, every inch the noble scion she pretended to be. "You’ve had your outburst. I’ll allow it. When you tire of pretending independence, you’ll remember. You always do."

She turned and walked toward the door. Each step measured, deliberate, not hurried. But her hand on the handle was too tight, her knuckles pale.

I didn’t stop her.

The latch clicked, and she was gone.

The silence after her departure felt different than before she came. Heavier. Thicker. My reflection in the mirror showed a boy with gray eyes that looked older than the rest of his face.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees again. The echo of Armand’s feelings still beat in my chest, softer now but insistent. He had loved her. That truth I could not deny. And though I wasn’t him, I carried his body, his name, his history. To spit on that love entirely felt wrong.

But to let it bind me again would be worse.

I thought of Lila’s soft smile, Nora’s careful braids, Max’s toy dinosaur set proudly on my chest. Love was supposed to protect, not control. To heal, not sharpen cruelty into theater. Seraphine had been taught the wrong script. Armand had played his part, and it had made them both worse.

I wouldn’t repeat that play.

But I wouldn’t abandon her, either.

If I was to honor the boy whose name I now carried, perhaps it was here. To stop her from becoming the villain my brother had written. To pull her off the path that would end with her standing against me, or against the world.

Not for love. Not for loyalty. For redemption. For homage. For choice.

I stood and crossed to the window. The campus sprawled below, students crossing the courtyards in their academy blues. Somewhere among them, Cael walked, the world’s eyes already starting to follow him. Somewhere beyond, Ariadne carried herself like a spear, still furious at me. And somewhere now, Seraphine would be moving, amethyst eyes hardening, her mind already weaving counterplots to what I had said.

She thought she could still shape me. She thought I would come back to her.

But I had made my decision.

This time, I would shape her. I would not let her become the villain.