The drive back to their private mansion was shrouded in a silence that was both comfortable and charged. The city lights streaked past the tinted windows, a river of gold against the velvet night. Elara leaned her head against the cool glass, the adrenaline from the ball slowly ebbing away, leaving behind a profound exhaustion and the heavy, ever-present secret.
Cassian, his profile sharp in the dim light, finally broke the quiet. "I must admit," he began, his tone a mixture of amusement and genuine bewilderment, "I am a little jealous."
Elara turned her head to look at him. "Jealous? Of what?"
"Of you," he said, a small smile touching his lips. "My own cousins. Amelia and Clara. They clung to you as if you were their long-lost sister. When we were leaving, I thought Amelia was going to produce an actual river of tears. I've known them their entire lives, and I've never seen them so… attached. They usually just tolerate me."
Elara remembered the scene vividly. Amelia, clutching her arm, had wailed, "But you can't go! We haven't even had our midnight snack party! We were going to do face masks and talk about all of Cassian's embarrassing childhood stories!" Clara, ever the dramatic, had added, "This feels like a tragedy! A beautiful, silver-clad tragedy! You must come back next weekend, I insist!"
A soft laugh escaped Elara. "They're wonderful. It was… fun. A different kind of fun than I'm used to."
"They adore you," Cassian stated, and the pride in his voice was unmistakable.
Once inside the sanctuary of their home, the grandeur of the ball fell away, replaced by the quiet intimacy of their normal life. Elara kicked off her heels with a sigh of relief, the cool marble floor a blessing on her aching feet. The weight of the question she needed to ask pressed down on her, but she knew she couldn't just blurt it out. She needed to ease into it.
She moved to the kitchen, returning with a bowl of plump, bright oranges. Settling onto the large sofa beside him, she began to peel one, the citrus scent filling the air. "You want some?" she offered, holding out a segment.
Cassian, who had been scrolling through reports on his tablet, looked up. A genuine smile, one of those rare, unguarded ones, appeared. "Oh, sure." He took the piece, his fingers brushing against hers.
As they ate the sweet fruit in companionable silence, Elara decided to start with a safer topic. "So," she began, trying to sound casual. "Your business in Singapore. Did you find the… 'junk'… right away? Or did you have to wait a whole week for him to show his face?"
Cassian paused, a segment of orange halfway to his mouth. He was visibly taken aback by the specificity of her question. "Oh, yes… that's right," he said slowly, his eyes narrowing in curiosity. "I only managed to pinpoint his main location at the beginning of the second week. The man was like a ghost. But… how did you know that?"
Elara opened her mouth to reply, but the sharp, insistent ring of the doorbell cut her off.
They exchanged a glance. It was late for visitors. Cassian stood, his posture immediately shifting from relaxed to guarded. He opened the door to find a young, nervous delivery man standing beside a stack of at least twenty large, carefully wrapped parcels.
"Good evening, sir," the man stammered, clearly intimidated by Cassian's presence. "These… these are a few parcels we were instructed to deliver to this address." He gestured weakly at the towering pile.
Cassian's face was like granite. "Who sent these?" he demanded, his voice a low, commanding rumble that brooked no argument.
The delivery boy flinched. "W-well… it was sent by a Mr. Daniel Sterling, sir."
Hearing the name, Cassian's eyes hardened. "We did not order—" he began, his voice cold enough to freeze fire.
But Elara was suddenly beside him, placing a calming hand on his arm. "It's alright," she said to the delivery man, her voice steady and polite. "Please, just leave them here for now. We will arrange for their relocation later. Thank you for your trouble."
The boy didn't need to be told twice. He practically fled back to his truck.
Cassian turned to her, his expression a storm of shock and confusion. "Elara? What is the meaning of this? Why would you accept anything from that snake?"
"Come," she said softly, leading him back to the sofa. "Sit. I need to tell you a story."
Once they were seated, he looked at her, his full attention captured, waiting with a patience she knew was reserved only for her.
"Let's start where we left off," she began. "When I went to the antique shop with Sophie to find a gift for your grandmother, Mr. Sterling was there. With his son, Daniel."
Cassian's jaw tightened. "Did they bother you?"
"There was… a mild argument. Sophie was magnificent, defending us both. But then, Mr. Sterling proposed a wager." She recounted the bet, the stakes, the humiliation Daniel faced when he presented his Egyptian piece.
Cassian listened, rapt. "So… you won?" he asked, a slow dawning of awe in his eyes.
"I did," Elara confirmed simply.
His gaze traveled to the mountain of parcels in their foyer and then back to her, his amazement growing. "So all of this… this is the entire inventory of 'Dreams of the Fleeting Reality'?"
"Not all of it," she corrected. "Only half. The other half will be delivered to Sophie. She was my partner in crime, after all."
A genuine, deep laugh escaped Cassian, a rich, warm sound that filled the room. "No wonder," he mused, shaking his head in disbelief. "When I finally cornered Sterling in Singapore, his usual fiery presence was… extinguished. His confidence was shattered. I thought it was my doing. But it wasn't." He looked at her, his pride so potent it was a physical force in the room. "It was extinguished by my own wife."
He was basking in the glow of her victory, his smile easy. It was the perfect moment, and yet the worst possible moment. But she had to know.
"C-Cassian?" she asked, her voice losing its steadiness.
He immediately picked up on her shift in tone. "Hm? Something wrong, Elara?" His smile faded, replaced by concern.
"Uhh… no, it's just…" She took a shaky breath, gathering her courage. "While I was at your grandmother's mansion, Aunt Patricia, while we were all chatting… she said something. Almost jokingly. She said everything was nice, and it would be fine as long as I was not… pregnant." Elara met his gaze, her own now serious and probing. "What did she mean by that, Cassian?"
The change in him was instantaneous and terrifying. All the color drained from his face. He looked as if he'd been physically struck. The tablet slipped from his lax fingers onto the sofa cushions. He knew. He had known this conversation would come, but he had hoped to put it off, to find a way to dismantle the threat before he had to voice its horror to her.
"W-well.. I-I.." he stammered, something she had never seen him do. "It's j-just—"
Elara's voice was low, steady, and deadly serious, her eyes blazing with a intensity that pinned him in place. "What is this family decree, Cassian? Are you hiding something from me?"
He tried to hold her gaze but flinched away, unable to bear the sheer force of her will. The truth was a monstrous thing, and he was its reluctant keeper.
Finally, he surrendered. His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his hands. "On my eighteenth birthday," he began, his voice hollow, "my father, on his deathbed, and the family elders… they made me swear an oath. The same oath Samuel had taken on his eighteenth birthday."
He forced himself to look at her, his eyes shadowed with a pain and a fear she had never seen in them before. Not when discussing corporate espionage, not even when recalling assassination attempts. This was a deeper, more personal terror.
"The oath is this," he whispered, the words tasting like ash. "If a Thorne successor gets a woman pregnant, then the family is honor-bound to… to eliminate the 'threat'."
The world stopped. The air vanished from Elara's lungs. Her blood turned to ice in her veins, a cold so profound it felt like death itself. "The… the threat?" she managed to choke out, her voice a mere thread of sound. "If I were pregnant… they would… they would harm my child?"
He reached for her hands, his own trembling. "It is a barbaric, archaic rule from a different time," he said urgently, his grip tight, as if he could physically stop the horror through force of will. "But the elders, they still hold the power to enforce it. They believe it prevents illegitimate heirs from muddying the bloodline, from causing succession wars."
A memory, sharp and cold, sliced through his own guilt. "After I took the oath," he continued, his voice gaining a bitter edge, "I asked them. If Samuel took the same oath, why was Aris still alive? That's when one of the elders… he revealed the truth." A shudder ran through him. "It sent a chill down my spine that has never left."
He told her then. He told her about Samuel's wife, the woman history recorded as dying from a sudden, tragic infection days after giving birth. "It was a lie," Cassian said, the words ripped from him. "From the moment the family learned she was pregnant, they began secretly administering drugs to her. In her tea, in her food. They were trying to force an abortion."
Elara felt the orange she had eaten turn to acid in her stomach. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"But it never worked," Cassian pressed on, his gaze distant, locked in the nightmare of the past. "That woman… she fought. With every fiber of her being, she fought them. She carried Aris to term. The delivery was hard, critical. But her body, weakened by months of poison… it couldn't recover. She didn't die from an infection. She was murdered by the Thorne family's obsession with purity."
The room spun. The sweet, loving family she had just spent a week with—the teasing cousins, the kind uncles—they were a facade. Beneath it lay this rotten, murderous core.
"And when Aris was born," Cassian's voice was barely audible now, "they tried to kill him, too."
Elara felt a sob rise in her throat, but she choked it down. Her voice was a ghost of a whisper. "W-wh-why… why is he still alive?"
Cassian looked at her, his eyes filled with a devastating pity. "...Because," he said slowly, "they found out, not long after Samuel's death, that Aris was not his biological son. He was never a true Thorne heir. He was never the 'threat' the decree was designed for. So, they let him live. A spoiled, pampered reminder of their own sin, a living, breathing lie."
He finished, his energy spent. "Samuel left this world… without ever knowing a fraction of this monstrous truth."
But Elara couldn't muster any sympathy for the dead. All she could think of was the life inside her. Her child. A true Thorne heir. The ultimate "threat."
Cassian saw the absolute terror on her face, the violent trembling of her hands. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. "Don't worry, Elara," he vowed into her hair, his voice fierce with determination. "I will talk to the elders. I will dismantle this decree, I swear to you. I will burn that entire antiquated system to the ground. No matter what it takes."
He held her away, looking into her eyes. "But… it will take time. A long time. They are entrenched, and they believe in this madness."
Time. The word was a death knell. Time was a luxury she did not have. The doctor's confirmation echoed in her mind: You are pregnant. A single, cold drop of sweat traced a path down her temple. She knew, with a certainty that was as calm as it was terrifying, that if she wanted her child to see the light of day, she could not wait. She would have to risk everything. No matter the cost.
Later, after a dinner she could not taste, after Cassian had retreated to the shower, the sound of the water a steady hiss that masked her movements, Elara slipped her phone from her pocket. Her hands were still shaking, but her resolve was iron. She dialed a number, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The line connected after two rings. "Hello? Sophie?" Elara's voice was a strained whisper, filled with a urgency that brooked no delay. "We need to talk. It's very, very important."