Chapter 13
“Still quiet as ever,” she hummed. “You know, I used to envy you. Papa loved you more. You were always the favorite. The obedient one. The perfect one. But look at you now. So humiliated you can’t even cry properly. Do you still wear your wedding ring like a good little puppet? Or did they take that too?”
kept my head down until we reached the steps. She didn’t stop.
“At least you’re consistent,” she said. “You left this place to chase some grand idea of love. You defied Papa, spit on our name, gave everything to a man who never even saw you. And what did you get? A dead child, a cheating husband, and your name dragged through the mud.”
I froze for half a breath at that.
She tilted her head. “Don’t flinch, Therese. You lost your son a few days ago. Crying won’t bring him back.”
“You don’t get to talk about him,” I said softly.
Fleur blinked, surprised I spoke at all.
She smiled again. “Still so gentle. So boring. I don’t know how you plan to survive here.”
**
Lunch was worse.
Father sat at the head of the table, staring at his food like it offended him. Fleur was sipping wine like she was at a gala. She didn’t stop talking. She went on about parties, boys, her upcoming trip to Europe, and how her professors said she had “a mind like wildfire.” I didn’t say a word. I just cut my food into pieces and forced them down.
Fleur smirked as she picked at her salad.
“You know, Therese used to be so proud,” she said. “Remember, Papa? When she screamed at you in the drawing room because she wanted to marry Torren? Said love was more important than family legacy. Said she didn’t care about our name. I think she even
cried.”
I kept eating.
“She was so noble,” Fleur sighed dramatically. “Now look at her. Hiding in her room all day like a ghost. I heard you cried in the bath last night. I’m sure the maids did too.”
“Enough, Fleur,” Father said sharply. “That mouth of yours will cost you one day.”
She looked at him and rolled her eyes.
He turned to me.
“You will marry Ephraim Lambert next week,” he said, not a request but a decision. “The
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alliance is still on the table.”
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Fleur nearly choked on her wine. She wiped her mouth and laughed out loud.
“You’re joking,” she said. “Thank God. I don’t want that comatose prince anyway. Let Therese have him. Comatose as ever, forgotten by his own family. Nobody even visits him anymore.”
I looked up slowly. “Comatose? What are you talking about? I spoke to him a few days ago. He’s awake.”
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “He just woke up two days ago. Or maybe three. I don’t keep track of dead things that rise. I prefer his cousin anyway. Same age as me. Less ghostly.”
She stood up and grabbed her wineglass. “Well,” she said, “I’m off to pack. My flight’s tomorrow. University won’t wait for spoiled rich girls like me.”
She leaned over to kiss Father on the cheek, then walked out without another glance at
- me.
**
Later that evening, Father called me into his office.
I sat in the same chair I used to sit in as a child when he’d lecture me about posture and piano scales. The bookshelves behind him were taller than me, and the curtains were drawn against the dusk.
“Now that your divorce has been finalized. It’s time for your wedding with Ephraim to be announced next week.”
“Can I grieve for a few weeks father?” I asked.
He folded his hands on the desk. “Grieving is for the weak. If you want to have the Calderon back, act like one. You, Therese–you’re used to monsters. You’ve lived with one for years.”
“He’s dangerous?” I asked quietly.
“Not dangerous the way Torren was,” Father said. “But unstable. Ephraim’s mind may not be whole. He was asleep too long. He remembers very little. A lot to catch up. But there’s… something dark in him now. Like a storm waiting to collapse.”
I didn’t speak. I just stared at the fireplace even though it wasn’t lit.
“You married a monster once,” Father said. “Maybe now, you’ll learn to tame one.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Instead, I looked out the window at the old Calderon gardens. The roses were overgrown. The statues were covered in moss. A kingdom that forgot it once had beauty.
Maybe the only way to bury a past like mine is to tie myself to a man who’s already been
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half–dead.
At least then, neither of us will expect sunlight.
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That night I was summoned to the Lambert estate, my hands wouldn’t stop trembling inside my coat. Not from fear. Just… cold. Or maybe it was the silence that lived in that house, the kind that followed a family that stopped hoping a long time ago.
It was strange walking through those halls again. The last time I was here, Ephraim was still hooked to machines, his voice barely a whisper. He looked at me like I was sunlight through thick fog.
“Go,” he had said back then. “Come back once your divorce is final.”
I had smiled through tears and said I would.
Now I stood at the edge of his drawing room, waiting. Not sure who I was anymore. Not sure who he had become.
The door opened.
And then he stepped in like a storm in a tailored suit. Still pale, but taller somehow. Straighter. The kind of man who didn’t just survive war, he became it. His eyes weren’t soft anymore. They were steel.
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“Therese Calderon,” he said. His voice was low and smooth and sharp like broken glass. “The beaten wife. The disgrace. The woman who crawled home with her tail between her legs.”
I didn’t say anything. Just kept my spine straight and eyes steady.
He took slow steps toward me, studying my face. I could smell the faint hint of something expensive on him. Leather, maybe. Or old books.
“You look different,” he said. “Older. Quieter.”
“I buried my son,” I replied. “That tends to age people.”
He flinched. Just a little. It was gone before I could study it.
“I heard,” he murmured, walking toward the window. “About the urn. About the scandal. The slap. The headlines.”
I didn’t ask how. Someone like Ephraim Lambert didn’t need newspapers. The world whispered its secrets to men like him.
He turned back to me, arms folded. “You stayed for too long, Therese. Let a man ruin you in full view of everyone. And for what? Love?”
“I thought it was love,” I said quietly.
His laugh was soft and cruel. “That’s the thing about you. You think too gently. Still trying
to see nood in rot”
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I looked down at my hands. The knuckles were still bruised from clenching too tightly in my sleep.
