Lord Cedric Vane stared at Joanna. Disbelief warred with fury until Viola's bowed head extinguished it like cold water. Truth.
His father? The man whose lap Joanna had warmed as a child, spinning tales of knights and dragons? Revoked her name? An invisible fist clenched around Cedric's ribs, twisting. Impossible. Yet Viola's silence screamed confirmation.
He scanned the room—the Dowager's frail defiance, Joanna's glacial mask, Thorne's unsettling attention on her, Elena's fragile tears—his sanctuary felt suddenly suffocating. Poisoned. With a clipped oath, he turned on his heel and strode out, the heavy door crashing behind him.
——
Silas Thorne stepped smoothly into the vacuum Cedric left. His bow was precise, his expression the cool facade of the disciplined commander. "General Silas Thorne, Dowager Vane. Your honor illuminates Silverwood."
The Dowager forced warmth. "General! Gratitude drowns me for those Valeridge herbs. Such kindness must be repaid." Her eyes darted to Elena, a subtle prompt. "Lady Viola and I were just discussing… your nuptials. Would it trouble Lord and Lady Thorne greatly to set the formalities in motion?"
Thorne took the seat opposite Elena, his gaze respectful, impersonal. "My parents' stores overflow with vigor." His nod encompassed the room. "Royal gifts like crimson ginseng are wasted on them. Naturally, they thought of Silverwood's matriarch." He addressed Viola, "Indeed, Lady Viola, the betrothal agreement nears its natural conclusion."
Viola beamed, grasping Elena's hand. "Our little Elena blooms beside such a match! The sooner you secure her future—"
Thorne's calm gaze shifted, suddenly sharp as a hunting hawk's. "A vital point arises." His eyes locked onto Joanna, an intrusive beam in the dim room. "Your position, Miss Nyle. As the recognized senior sister within Silverwood's walls now… would not primogeniture require your vows precede Miss Shaw's?" His tone was reasonable, conversational, yet it landed like a challenge coin dropped onto stone.
Joanna's breath hitched. A subtle tightening around her eyes betrayed the shock beneath her mask. What game is this?
Viola froze, her smile cracking. Elena's hand tightened convulsively in her mother's grasp. Her blush died, replaced by a sickly pallor as her eyes, wide with dawning panic, flicked between Thorne and Joanna.
"General Thorne!" Viola's voice strained for levity. "Our Joanna's path is her own! Why—"
"Why indeed?" Thorne echoed, his gaze unyielding from Joanna. He offered his logic like a blade wrapped in silk. "Silverwood honors tradition, does it not? The eldest daughter must marry first. Unless Joanna renounces her position?" He arched a brow. A soft, chilling threat.
The room held its breath. The Dowager frowned, sensing currents she hadn't charted. Viola floundered.
Joanna broke the brittle silence. Her voice, when it came, was honed steel dipped in ice. "Then Lord Cedric must find a bride posthaste." She offered Thorne a smile brittle as winter glass. "As the heir, must his vows not blaze the trail? Else, Silverwood's halls may echo with the cries of Thorne infants… perhaps while Lord Cedric still roams unwed?" The mockery, subtle but lethal, hung in the air.
Thorne absorbed the blow without flinching. His expression remained contemplative. "A principle stands." He conceded with a slight incline of his head, ignoring Cedric's non-existent presence. "Seniority applies."
That fragile word, "seniority," snapped something in Elena. Her carefully cultivated composure fractured. Tears, genuine this time born of fear and crushing humiliation, welled. She looked at Thorne, silently pleading: Why? Am I nothing?
Thorne offered her only the briefest glance, devoid of the warmth she knew. He returned his focus to the Dowager. "The matter deserves consideration. With your leave, Dowager?" His polite exit had the finality of a tomb sealing.
The unspoken refusal to repudiate Joanna's point struck Elena like a physical blow. Viola, helpless, furious, could only murmur excuses and lead her shattered daughter away.
——
Outside the Dowager's hushed sanctuary, the frost-laden air bit Thorne's face. A voice, tremblingly soft, stopped him.
"Silas?"
For a fragment of a second, the name Joanna flashed. The cadence was wrong—too weak, too smooth.
He turned. Elena Shaw stood alone on the colonnade, the weak sunlight catching the tracks on her cheeks.
"Miss Shaw?" He kept distance between them.
Elena drew nearer, her fists clenched in the silk of her sleeve. "Are you… reluctant?" The words tore from her, raw. "To bind yourself… to me?"
Thorne paused. Surprise flickered, replaced by cool assessment. "What foundation supports such speculation?"
"Inside! You... you deferred—!"
"Honor requires structure, Miss Shaw." His explanation flowed seamlessly, detached. "The principle of precedence exists." His gaze swept over her tear-streaked face, registering the despair but offering no comfort. "The betrothal between our houses remains valid." He offered no assurance of desire, only contract. "Rest your spirit. I will call soon."
He turned away, his broad back disappearing into the Manor's shadows without another glance. Elena remained on the frigid stones, his empty promise echoing around her. "Remains valid." Not chosen. Bound. Her future, laid bare, was as fragile as winter ice over deep, black water.
——
Within the manor's ancestral hall, its air thick with dust and judgment, Cedric knelt beside the Vane Codex. Its heavy vellum pages lay splayed, wrinkled under his furious search. Joanna. Nyle. Nothing. She was expunged. A ghost banished from official lineage.
His father's signature glared back—a neat, firm loop sealing Joanna's exclusion. The 'crime'? The shattering of a single crystal goblet. A goblet against fifteen winters of laughter, lessons, shared secrets! Had sentiment turned so brittle? Were the bonds he felt mere parchment-thin delusions?
A wave of understanding washed over him—Joanna's ice-wall indifference, her refusal of kinship titles. How could she bestow what had been violently retracted?
Then, like frost creeping back over thawing ground, resentment hardened. Parchment! Ink! They are not flesh and bone! Silverwood's halls echoed with Joanna's presence—the scent of roses she loved in the conservatory, the nick in the banister where she'd dropped a dagger at twelve. How did ink erase that?
He thought of the mastiff pup they'd kenneled for Joanna years ago. Fed choice cuts, draped in silvered silk, it had died old, its gravestone larger than some serving lads'. Had it earned such devotion? Or merely accepted it? Joanna… Joanna rejected it. Like she rejected the gowns. The comfort. Their apology.
She remembers the lye, not the lavender. The thought burned like cheap gin. Viola's desperate plea to 'return to normal' haunted him. Normal for whom? For Elena? Joanna's scars weren't just skin deep; they were etched into her refusal to play the grateful prodigal. This was the lesson. The one she refused to learn: Gratitude.
He slammed the heavy Codex shut, the sound echoing like a knell. Very well. If gratitude wouldn't thaw her… perhaps the unforgiving winter she knew better would remind her of the shelter she'd scorned. Plans, cold and sharp as the blade at his hip, began to form in the gloom. She needed reminding—painfully—where true loyalty, true belonging, resided. And he would administer it. Silas Thorne's meddling… well. Thorne would learn consequences too.