Chapter 8: When Glass Remembers Blood

The pop was small. But it was the kind of sound ancient families had learned never to ignore—a single crack, sharp and pure, slicing through violins and laughter and centuries of etiquette.

Althea’s champagne glass shattered in her hand. Shards flashed like tiny stars across the polished marble floor. A sliver of crystal bit deep into her palm, blood blooming instantly - bright, indecent red against flawless event lighting.

The room fell silent.

Magic slammed up her spine, vicious and uncoiled, a pressure wave that made the world tilt. Pain seared behind her eyes. The scent of burnt sugar - her tell - coated the air like something molten.

Althea staggered.

Umbra wasn’t there. They’d forced her to attend without him. She was alone inside a storm she couldn’t leash.

Across the ballroom -

Noah moved. Georgina barely managed a startled “Noah?” as he tore his arm out of her grasp. He pushed through the crowd before anyone else reacted.

“Althea!”

But her family moved faster.

Hiraya reached her first, fingers trembling inches from Althea’s wrist, afraid to touch her when she was this volatile.

“Bunso,” Hiraya whispered. “You need to breathe. Stop - stop letting it out - "

Odesa stepped between Althea and the eyes that are starting to look their way, shoulders squared, a silent wall of steel.

Ricardo turned, his expression a kind of quiet, promising annihilation. His hand flexed once. People nearest him stepped back on instinct.

But neither Noah nor Ricardo got to her first.

Luca did.

He hadn’t been across the room.

He’d been waiting.

He slid beside her with infuriating calm, bypassing Hiraya, ignoring Odesa’s glare, stepping straight into Althea’s space like he belonged there.

“How clumsy,” he murmured, voice warm velvet and sharpened mockery. “This isn’t like you.”

He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t pause.

He took her bleeding hand.

Althea gasped - a mixture of pain and something far more dangerous.

Luca turned her palm over, studying the embedded shard as if it insulted him personally.

Then, with infuriating gentleness, he pressed his thumb against the injury, forcing blood to well up richer.

Althea sucked in a breath.

“You’re a mess, Mon coeur,” he whispered, just for her. “Let me fix it.”

He lifted her hand. And kissed the blood.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim.

It was intimate, possessive, and utterly indecent in the middle of the oldest families in the world. Heat shot up her arm, into her throat, down her spine.

The gasp wasn’t just hers.

Someone near them actually swore under their breath.

And that was the exact moment Noah arrived.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarled, shoving a man aside to reach her.

He saw Luca’s mouth against her skin. He saw the reverence. He saw her breath falter. Noah’s face broke. Not with fear.

With fury.

He grabbed her free arm—not roughly, but desperately, like she was falling.

“Get your hands off her, Ashford.”

“She’s bleeding,” Luca said, still unhurried, still holding her hand like a relic. “But thank you for the theatrics.”

He lifted his thumb again—her blood smeared across the pad.

“I was just helping.”

“If you touch her again,” Noah hissed, “I will stop pretending to be civilized.”

Luca shrugged. “You weren’t convincing anyone.”

Althea couldn’t breathe, not with Luca’s heat on one side. Not with Noah’s grip anchoring her on the other. Not with the entire room watching her unravel.

“Let go,” she said, voice shaking—not from fear but from the magic clawing up her throat.

Neither one listened.

Her power surged beneath her skin, a live wire coursing through her bones.

The scent of burnt sugar thickened.

The chandelier overhead gave a warning chime.

Hiraya’s voice cracked. "Bunso,

you’re going to break something alive—"

Althea ripped her arm out of Noah’s grasp.

She tore her hand away from Luca’s

“Excuse me,” she said coldly.

Then she turned—

And the retreat became instinct.

Survival. Escape.

Not from them, from herself.

The crowd parted without realizing why. The scent of sugar and lightning clung to her like a warning, and the oldest families knew better than to stand in the path of something volatile.

Her heels hit the polished floor like a countdown as she crossed the ballroom, head high, hand bleeding, and pulse roaring.

Past the ushers. Part the startled students. Past the tall, double doors.

The air chilled instantly. And the silence outside the ballroom wasn’t peace.

It was watching her.

Waiting.

She kept walking. Down the west wing corridor—cold stone walls lined with portraits, varnished eyes following her with ancient judgment. Her magic crackled against the air, hungry, restless, scraping at the door of her ribs like something wanting out.

Her breath hitched.

She blinked hard.

She needed space. She needed dark corners and still air and no eyes on her.

The gallery was ahead. Quiet. Shadowed. A sanctuary made of old wood and older ghosts.

She slipped inside, and the door clicked shut behind her.