Heiress by blood, His by Fate

Chapter Five - Nothing is What it looks Like

I stood at that window for a long time, holding the photograph with both hands, not moving, not breathing properly, just staring at it like it might change into something that made more sense.

My mother.

The same face from the one photograph my aunt had kept in her bedside drawer, the one I had looked at so many times growing up that I had memorised every detail of it, her dark eyes, the slight curve of her smile, the way she tilted her chin.

But this wasn't old.

The date on the back was three months ago.

Which meant she was alive three months ago.

Which meant she might be alive right now.

I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall because my legs stopped feeling reliable, and I just sat there in the quiet of that room, trying to hold onto what I knew for certain and what I didn't.

What I knew was that my aunt had told me my mother died when I was seven.

What I knew was that I had spent fifteen years believing that.

And what I now had in my hand was a photograph that told me that for at least some of those fifteen years, somebody was lying.

I pressed the photograph flat against my chest.

The first person I thought about was Lucien.

The way he sometimes stopped mid-sentence, the way he chose his words too carefully when my mother came up, the way he had said she was family before catching himself and going quiet, all of it started rearranging itself in my head.

He knew.

I couldn't prove it yet, but I felt it in the same way you feel something true before you can explain why.

I got to my feet, tucked the photograph into the inside pocket of my bag, and lay down on the bed, because falling apart was not something I was going to let myself do in this house, not tonight, not in front of anyone, not until I understood who I was dealing with.

Sleep came eventually.

When I woke up, the morning was grey and quiet.

I showered, dressed, and made a decision.

I was going to find the hidden rooms.

The letter had mentioned things I wasn't supposed to know about, and Selene's warning about asking the right questions had stayed with me, and the photograph had confirmed what I was beginning to suspect: that this house was full of things that had been kept just out of reach.

I waited until I heard Lucien's footsteps pass my door during his morning patrol, counted the seconds, and then slipped out.

The east corridor was the one I hadn't been shown.

I moved along it quietly, past closed doors and old paintings and the kind of corners that felt like they had seen things, until I reached a door near the back that looked the same as all the others except for one thing.

The keyhole was different.

Older.

I crouched and looked through it and saw nothing but dark, but the fact that it was locked differently from everything else told me it mattered.

I heard a soft sound behind me.

I turned fast.

Ethan was standing at the end of the corridor, one hand in his pocket, watching me with an expression that was no longer the easy smile from yesterday.

"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.

"What's behind that door?" I asked.

He glanced at it briefly.

"Old records," he said, "estate documents, family histories, nothing important."

"Then why is it locked differently from every other door in this house?"

He looked at me for a moment.

The easy smile tried to come back, but didn't quite make it.

"You're sharper than they expected," he said, almost to himself.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means," he said, stepping slightly closer, "that you need to be careful about which doors you stand in front of."

"Are you warning me or threatening me?" I said.

He considered that.

"Somewhere in between," he said honestly, and something about that honesty was more unsettling than a direct threat would have been.

He moved past me and turned at the corridor junction.

"Lucien is looking for you," he said without turning back, "I'd get to breakfast before he starts checking the east wing."

He disappeared.

I stood in front of that locked door for one more second, memorising its position, its keyhole, the small scratch mark on the lower right corner of the frame that looked fresh, like it had been opened recently.

Then I turned and walked toward the dining room.

Lucien was already at the breakfast table when I arrived, seated with his back to the wall in the way people sit when they are trained to see every entrance at once, a coffee cup in front of him and his eyes on me the second I walked through the door.

"Where were you?" he asked.

"Walking," I said.

He looked at me.

"In the east corridor?" he said.

I held his gaze.

"Is that not allowed?" I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, and I watched him decide something.

"Some parts of this estate have a history that isn't ready to be uncovered," he said.

"By who?" I asked. "By me specifically, or in general?"

His jaw tightened slightly.

"Arielle," he said, and the way he said my name was different from how he'd said it before, lower, more careful, like it meant something to him that he didn't want it to.

"There are things I will explain," he said, "but I need you to be patient."

"How long have you known that my mother might be alive?" I asked.

The room went completely still.

Lucien didn't move.

His face didn't change.

But his hands, resting on the table in front of him, went very still in a way that hands go still when someone is working very hard to control their reaction.

He knew.

I was right.

He opened his mouth to speak, and I held my breath, because whatever came next was either going to break something or confirm everything I was already afraid of, and before a single word left his mouth, every light in the dining room went out at once.