Dmitri's POV
The click of the oak door was the cocking of a hammer. I didn't flinch. The stolen file was a live grenade in my hand, the gold locket a cold, condemning weight.
Julien stood framed by the desk, the last vestige of the "Golden Boy" stripped away. What remained was the iron core of a Rousseau heir. His gaze, fixed on the file, held a hatred aged in the cellars of our families' shared history.
"I said step away, Volkov." His voice was a low, controlled burn. "Your family has plundered enough. You don't get to pick through our skeletons."
"Your father is the gravedigger," I shot back, circling the desk. The space between us hummed with violence. "This isn't an admissions file. It's a coroner's report for a breathing girl. A scar. A locket. He's not safeguarding a secret. He's burying a witness."
Julien's eyes flickered to the locket. A crack in his armor. "I know what it is. I've known. The difference is, I wanted to protect her from it. I wanted her to have a future, not a funeral dirge. I wanted her to be Isabelle."
"A future built on a headstone is a prison." I closed the final distance until we stood chest-to-chest, the air stale with our mutual contempt. "You were playing guardian in a dollhouse while the real wolves were at the door. The Schuylers, my father… they're not debating her future. They're drafting her epitaph. Your protection made her a soft target."
His fist clenched, knuckles bleaching. "And you? You want to be her savior? Don't make me laugh. You want to leash the Valois legacy to clean the Volkov stench from your own name. You don't want to save her. You want to brand her."
"I want the truth." The words were a snarl. "And I will burn this place to its foundations to give it to her."
I shoved the file inside my jacket. The sound of measured, authoritative footsteps echoed in the hall, Rousseau's return.
"Move."
Julien's conflict lasted a heartbeat, rage warring with self-preservation. Then his hand shot out, not to strike, but to seize my arm, yanking me toward the servant's door hidden behind the drapes. We spilled into the dark, narrow passage as the main door groaned open behind us.
Isabelle's POV
The calm after Julien's embrace was the false stillness of a triggered landmine. I couldn't sit in a classroom. The walls felt like they were breathing, whispering the word Viktor Volkov had used: Extinguish.
I found myself in the Restricted Section, a cemetery of leather and dust where the school's real history festered. I needed proof. Was my mother a thief, or was she the theft?
My trembling fingers stretched for a ledger high on a shelf. A hand, larger and steadier, reached over my shoulder and plucked it down.
I spun. Dmitri filled the narrow aisle, a storm in human form. And behind him, materializing from the deeper shadows, was Julien. The two of them together was a paradox that broke the world, sun and eclipse sharing the same sky.
"You're searching in the wrong grave," Dmitri said. His voice was quiet, yet it seemed to vibrate in the marrow of the old shelves.
"I don't need your guidance."
"You do." He pulled a slim folder from his jacket and held it out. "This isn't from the library. It's from my father's safe and your Director's vault. It's the truth they tried to murder fifteen years ago."
I took it. The brush of his fingers sent the familiar, unwelcome current through my hand. I opened the cover.
The world ceased to turn.
"Valois Estate Liquidation." Not embezzlement. Expropriation. A calculated, legalized theft. My mother's disgrace was a corporate raiding tactic. The scholarship that was my lifeline was funded by the plunder of my own birthright.
Beneath the dry legalize was a photograph. An infant. A fierce, red cut across a tiny, perfect palm.
"They didn't just ruin her," I whispered, the words ash in my mouth. "They stole her legacy. And then they tried to burn the heir."
"They didn't just try, Isabelle," Julien's voice was soft, pained. He took a half-step, his hand rising slightly before falling back to his side. "They succeeded in making you forget. You are not Isabelle Duval, orphan of Saint Brigitte's. You are Althea De Valois. The rightful owner of the ground this school is built on."
Althea. The name was a key turning in a rusted lock deep inside me. It tasted of smoke and lullabies.
"And now they plan to steal from you again," Dmitri said, stepping closer. His body caged me against the shelves, his heat a palpable force. "But they cannot steal what is under my protection. I know their game. I was bred to play it."
"And you?" I looked up at him, tears of fury blurring his sharp features. "The Demon Prince appoints himself my paladin?"
His gaze darkened, dropping to my mouth. "I am no one's champion. But I keep what is mine. And I have decided you are not theirs to erase. You are mine to defend."
Julien's jaw hardened. "She is her own, Dmitri. But she needs an ally within the fortress. That is my role. I can fight from the inside."
Before I could answer, the library's main doors groaned. Voices, polished and deadly, cut through the silence.
Viktor Volkov. Alexandre Rousseau.
"Down." Dmitri's command was a whip-crack.
He yanked me into the black cavity behind a rolling ladder. Julien pressed in from the other side. I was trapped between them, the air thick with competing scents, sandalwood and citrus, panic and resolve. Two heartbeats thundered against me, one a furious drum, the other a rapid, controlled staccato.
Dmitri's POV
I held her, one hand over her mouth to stifle any sound. She was small, soft, and radiating a frantic heat that made my own blood simmer. She was slight against me, trembling with a violence that felt like my own pulse externalized.
"The Gala is a risk we cannot afford, Viktor," Rousseau's voice was mere feet away, a confidential murmur in the sacred quiet. "If she performs, if the major donors see that face and make the connection… the estate litigation would be catastrophic."
"It's handled," my father's reply was a winter wind. "The board agrees to a transfer. A prestigious program in California. If she resists, we leverage the 2005 files. Embezzlement becomes a hereditary trait. And should that prove insufficient…" A pause, colder than the silence. "The North Wing's old electrical system is a known hazard. Tragedies, like history, have a way of repeating."
Their footsteps receded. I didn't release her immediately. The fine tremors running through her frame spoke of a terror turning into something harder.
"They're going to kill me," she breathed against my palm as I lowered it.
"No." The word was absolute. "They are going to attempt. They have forgotten one thing."
Her silver eyes, wide in the gloom, found mine. "What?"
I leaned close, my lips a breath from her ear, acutely aware of Julien's searing glare from the darkness. "I do not follow my father's orders. And I do not relinquish what I have claimed."
I pulled her from the hiding place, my grip on her arm anchoring. "The Masquerade Gala is in a week. You will perform. You will play until every patron in that hall forgets the name Schuyler and remembers the name Valois. And I will be standing at your shoulder when you reclaim it."
Isabelle looked from the damning folder in her hands to the locket I still held. The fear in her eyes crystallized, transforming into a cold, brilliant fury that reflected my own. She looked at Julien, then back to me, her chin lifting not with a princess's poise, but with a queen's decree.
"I will do more than play," she said, her voice a low, lethal promise. "I will dismantle them. Brick by gilded brick."