Chapter 5

A second later he was already walking away from her, toward a distant corner where Celeste stood smiling, lifting her hand in a little wave.

Vivienne felt the last thing inside her go out. She closed her eyes. She turned around and walked out of the ballroom without looking back.

She got home and found her bedroom had been reassigned to Celeste.

Lily, the housekeeper, drifted up beside her. "Miss Ashford. That's Celeste's room now."

Pity in her voice. Vivienne stood frozen in the doorway for a long moment.

"Then where are my things?"

A minute later Lily walked her into a dusty guest room. The housekeeper looked embarrassed. "Miss, after you left we used this room to store your belongings. I'll clean it up now."

Vivienne didn't answer. She searched for half an hour.

The one photograph of her with her mother was missing.

After her mother died Richard had been unable to bear any reminders of Seraphina. He pulled all her films from streaming. He ordered every photograph in the house burned. Too painful, he said.

Vivienne had hidden one—a framed snapshot of her and her mother, kept safe in a locked drawer.

She strode down the hall to her old bedroom.

The frame was on the nightstand.

She walked closer. It was the photograph. And it was sitting next to a pendant necklace her mother had given her, a hairpin her brother had commissioned from a jeweler for her sixteenth birthday, and a pair of diamond earrings from Killian—all her most precious things, everything she'd carefully stored away, now laid out on Celeste's vanity like trophies.

She picked up the frame, shaking. The glass was intact. Her mother smiled at her from inside, holding her as a child, the two of them warm and whole. Tears hit before she could stop them.

Then she swept up the jewelry. What was hers was hers. She was taking it back.

"Sister—what are you doing in my room?"

She turned. Celeste stood in the doorway, eyes round.

Vivienne gripped the frame harder, closed her eyes, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and slapped Celeste across the face.

Celeste shrieked and hit the floor. Killian, coming up behind her, lunged forward and pulled her up, panicked. "Vivienne, are you insane? She's your sister."

He saw the tears on Celeste's cheek and lost it, shouting for someone to bring ice.

On a normal day Vivienne would have swallowed it. Not now.

"My sister? She's the product of my father's affair."

The slap rang out before she processed it. She hit the floor this time. Her forearm scraped open and bled.

She raised her head. Julian was standing over her. He looked at her like she was something he'd scraped off his shoe.

He and Killian flanked Celeste like bodyguards.

"You've gone too far," Julian said. "The only reason you got out of Blackwell as fast as you did is because Celeste asked for leniency."

Blackwell. That word detonated seven months of nightmares inside her skull.

The whole thing was a blade to the chest.

And then Julian crouched down as if nothing had happened and reached out as if to help her up. "Does your cheek hurt?"

He had just hit her and now he was asking if she was okay.

Her eyes burned. She shrugged his hand off and stood up alone. Her fingers tightened around what she'd retrieved. The things that belonged to her. And she felt a dizzy, helpless panic—she couldn't even keep what was hers.

"This is mine," she said to the two of them. "Who let you decide to give it away?"

Celeste's face was a portrait of apology. "I'm sorry. They're just so beautiful. Killian and Julian said I could have them. I didn't mean to take yours."

Vivienne's pupils trembled. She looked at them, a long, empty look.

"Is that so?"

Both men froze. The light that had always lived in her eyes was gone, and something animal in them registered it and went uneasy.

Julian forced his expression flat. "Celeste didn't have any jewelry when she arrived. If you want something I'll buy you replacements."

Killian reached for her hand and found it cold as a stone. He softened. "Vivi—it's nothing. Anything you want, I'll get you another one."

She said nothing. She looked down at the gifts in her hand—gifts that, in another life, each of them had spent months commissioning for her, things they had been so proud to place in her palm.

All of it had been emptied out.

She curled her lip into something that wasn't a smile. Then she simply opened her hands.

The pendant, the earrings, the hairpin all hit the marble and rang.

"Celeste. Since you love stealing from me so much—take them. They're yours."

She didn't want any of it. Not the objects. Not the people. Not anything.

Celeste's face stilled. Something cold and fast moved through her eyes. She shoved past Vivienne without warning, throwing her to the ground, and bent to scoop the jewelry up.