Chapter 9: The Gallery of Fractures

Althea didn’t run. Running meant prey. She walked, fast and precise, her heels striking the marble like a countdown—the ballroom behind her pulsed with light and noise and the aftershock of shattered glass. Ahead, the west wing corridor waited: cooler, dimmer, the air thinning as if even oxygen knew better than to linger.

Her palm throbbed in time with her heartbeat. Blood seeped sluggishly between her fingers, warm and sticky. The scent of burnt sugar clung to her skin, a phantom of the magic still swarming under her bones.

Contain.

Contain.

Contain.

She forced each breath through her teeth, shallow and measured. The last thing she was going to do was detonate in the middle of the school. She had enough enemies. She didn’t need to add “mass murderer” to the list.

The gallery doors loomed at the end of the corridor. Tall, carved, smug.

She pushed them open.

Inside, the silence had weight. Paintings of benefactors and dead saints lined the walls, oil and varnish and gilt frames, all watching with stiff, eternal judgment. The floor here was darker stone, polished to the point where it reflected slivers of her as she moved.

She stopped halfway down the room and braced her good hand against the cool stone of a column, closing her eyes for half a second. Her cheek still burned where the earlier slap of humiliation had landed, even if it hadn’t been physical. Noah with another woman on his arm. Noah watching her. Noah doing nothing about it except looking ruined. She clenched her jaw until it hurt.

You ran. Twice.

Her magic surged in answer, pressing against her ribs, hungry for an outlet.

No. Not here. Not with a hundred people and a priceless school under her feet.

Hinga apat…

She pulled in four careful counts of air, held it, and let it out slowly, slowly, slowly.

Again.

Her power pressed harder, restless, tasting her anger, begging.

She forced it down like she was shoving something wild back behind a door and dropping every bolt.

“Althea Sombra”

The voice slid out of the shadows behind a column.

Smooth. Too confident. Wrong.

She opened her eyes.

Adrian Holt stepped into the spill of soft gallery light; the room belonged to him. Senior. Beautiful in the way bad habits were: well-cut tux, good cheekbones, family money, new money, and the dead certainty that the world had been built to excuse him.

She exhaled, long and sharp. “No.”

He smiled, slow and mocking. “That’s not an introduction.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “Move.”

“I watched you out there,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. His eyes glinted with mean amusement. “Laurent. Ashford. Sombras. That little stunt with the glass.” He stepped closer. Champagne clung to his breath, sweet and sour. “I get it now. The fuss.”

Every muscle in her shoulders tightened. “Get. Out of my way.”

“That’s the thing,” Adrian said lightly. “People don’t say ‘no’ to me. That’s not how this works.”

He shifted sideways to cut off her path as she tried to walk past him.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“I don’t think you are.”

His hand shot out and closed around her bare arm, just above the elbow. His grip was casual. Testing. Cruel. It tightened when she tried to pull back.

“Let go,” she said.

“Just curious,” he murmured, stepping in, crowding her space. “What it takes to make you scream. All that Sombra ice. All that composure. Boys are tearing each other apart over you. Laurent playing the tragic noble. Ashford playing the devil. I want to see what they’re seeing.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, low and lethal.

His fingers dug in, hard enough to bruise.

“I just need to see what happens,” he whispered, “when someone finally tells you no.”

She looked up at him then.

It would have been easier if there had been nothing in his eyes. Instead, there was delight. Curiosity. The ugly, eager hunger of someone about to press a bruise to see how loud it makes the victim scream.

“Don’t,” she said. Her voice was soft.

It was a warning.

He grinned like she had encouraged him. “That’s not a real word in rooms like this,” he said.

“It will be for you.”

He laughed, a wet, nasty sound. “Feisty.”

His other hand came up and shoved her, hard.

Her back slammed into the stone wall. The impact jarred her skull; white stars exploded behind her eyelids. Her bandaged hand scraped painfully against the column; she hissed.

He followed, closing the distance before she could slide away.

His fingers snatched at the back of her dress. The zipper caught. With a sharp, violent yank, he ripped it down to her waist.

Cool air hit her bare back.

She went very, very still.

“Let go, Adrian,” she said.

Now her voice wasn’t soft. It was dead calm.

The portraits on the walls seemed to hold their breath.

her magic lurched upward, a monster surging for the door of its cage.

Let me out. Let me turn him to ash.

Her family was two corridors away. Noah was in the ballroom. The school, full of students and teachers and people who had never chosen to be near a Sombra, lay under her feet. If she let go, she wouldn’t stop at Adrian.

Hinga, apat…

She dragged air into her lungs, diamond-sharp.

Adrian’s hand flashed. He slapped her.

The crack of his palm against her cheek rang through the gallery. Her head whipped to the side. Pain flared hot and immediate along her face. The metallic tang of blood flooded her mouth as her teeth cut into her lip.

Her power slammed against the inside of her skin so hard she saw white.

Contain.

She dug her nails into her own palm until fresh pain distracted her.

He saw her stillness and smiled. He thought it meant surrender.

“You’ll thank me,” he said. “One day. When you’re done slumming it with boys who think you’re holy.”

His fingers fisted in the torn silk at her shoulder. He pulled.

The sound of fabric ripping echoed off the stone, obscene and final. The front of the gown gaped open, baring her to the waist. Her shoulder, the slope of her collarbone, the full curve of her breast - all exposed to cold air and cold eyes and the judgment embedded in every brushstroke of the world around them.

She gasped. Not in fear. In shock. In fury so cold it scalded.

Adrian’s breath hitched.

His gaze dropped, turned dark and avid. Arrogance shifted into something uglier.

“So fucking perfect,” he hissed.

His hand left her arm and slid up to her throat, thumb pressing into the hollow to hold her in place. The other fumbled clumsily at her exposed skin, fingers where no one had the right to be.

He angled his mouth towards hers. He didn’t get there.

Another hand clamped around his wrist and squeezed.

The sound of bones cracking was thick and wrong in the quiet.

Adrian screamed, a strangled, high sound.

A voice, low and sharp as broken glass, said:

“Try again.”

Noah.

Althea had never seen him like this. Not angry. Not irritated. Not even furious.

Stripped.

His tux was immaculate. His hair is still neat. But his eyes were dark, blown wide and storm-colored, and every line of his body was drawn taut. He wasn’t the golden heir in that moment. He was a weapon.

He twisted Adrian’s wrist until the tendons strained.

Adrian choked on another scream, knees buckling.

Noah let go of his wrist only to catch him by the throat. His fingers sank into Adrian’s collar as if they’d grown there.

He threw him.

Adrian’s body crashed into the nearest portrait - some solemn founder frozen in oil. Wood splintered. The frame cracked. Adrian slid down the wall and hit the floor with a heavy, graceless thud.

“Noah… please - " he gasped, scrambling, clutching his arm.

Noah stalked toward him. Each step was precise, measured. That was what made it frightening. He wasn’t flailing. He wasn’t out of control. He was very much in control, and that control was choosing violence.

“If you ever look at her again,” Noah said softly, “If you ever think her name again…”

“I will end you. Not your reputation. You.”

He let go.

Adrian stumbled up, eyes wild, and ran. He didn’t look back. The echoes of his retreat died away down the corridor.

Silence pressed in again.

Noah stood there for one suspended second, chest rising and falling, knuckles split and bleeding. His hands shook. Then he turned. He saw her. And the heat in him turned into something else entirely.

Althea was still pinned against the wall, one hand clutching the torn fronts of her dress together as best she could. Her cheek was bright red, the imprint of Adrian’s hand already blooming. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. A dark patch matted her hair near the scalp where it had hit stone.

She stared at him, pupils blown wide, breathing short and jagged.

Somewhere under the shock and violation and humiliation was something worse: the brittle, dawning realization that she’d nearly lost control. That the only thing standing between Adrian and being reduced to dust had been her refusal to kill a building full of people for his sake.

Noah’s face broke.

“Did he hurt you?” His voice scraped out of his throat, raw and shredded. He took a step, then another, hand lifting as if to reach for her - and stopped himself, fingers curling in midair. “Tell me where,” he begged. “Althea. Please. Let me fix it.”

The words punched into her.

He’d run from her. Twice. He’d called what passed between them a mistake. And now, he looked like someone had skinned him alive.

“I’m fine,” she said, which was a lie, and they both knew it.

She swallowed, tasted iron, and forced her voice to steady.

“Look at me,” she said softly.

He did.

His eyes were wild, unfocused, like he was losing himself somewhere between the broken portrait and the blood on his own hands.

“Breathe,” she whispered. “Four in. Six out.”

He latched onto the instruction like a drowning man onto a rope. He dragged in a breath. One. Two. Three. Four.

Let it out.

Again.

His shoulders shuddered. His jaw worked, trying to hold together a composure that had been cracked to hell.

Her hand left the torn fabric just long enough to reach for him. She touched his cheek. His skin was warm. His stubble rasped against her fingers. He froze under the contact.

“You’re not him,” she said. “You’re not Adrian. Do you understand me?”

Something in his expression shattered. His hands rose, slow as if he were afraid he’d spook her or himself, and cupped her bruised cheek with an almost unbearably gentleness. His thumb brushed the reddened skin, the smear of blood at the corner of her mouth, then slid up to the tacky dampness in her hair. He closed his eyes, just for a second. When he opened them again, the storm was still there - but now it was drowning.

He leaned in. Their foreheads touched. The breath left her in a tiny, choked sound.

The air shifted.

The danger didn’t leave; it changed shape. From external threat into something interior, intimate, just as likely to destroy her if she let it.

Her lips parted.

His gaze dropped to them. He hesitated, for a heartbeat, poised on the edge of a choice he’d already made in every way that mattered.

Noah moved first. His mouth found hers. It was not careful. It was heat, apology, confession, and desperation all tangled into one ruinous collision. He kissed her like he’d been holding his breath since the library and had finally chosen suffocation over the life his family wanted.

His split knuckles brushed the bare skin of her back where the dress hung torn, his fingers spreading over her spine as if anchoring himself to her was the only way he could still stand. She shivered, the shock of skin on skin blazing up her nerves.

She grabbed his collar in both hands, clutching, hauling him closer. The ruined dress slipped further; she didn’t care. For a moment, there was nothing but the taste of him, the scrape of his teeth, the ragged sound he made when she opened for him like she’d been waiting for this exact catastrophe.

She was drowning.

He was drowning.

They chose not to swim.

When he finally tore himself away, it wasn’t because the kiss had run out. It was because his lungs had.

He rested his forehead against hers again, breathing hard, his breath hot against her swollen lips.

“What the fuck,” he whispered, voice cracking, “are you doing to me, Althea?”

She could have said, “The same thing you’re doing to me.” She could have said, “This is what you begged for.” She could have said nothing at all and kissed him again.

Footsteps interrupted them. Sharp. Unhurried.

Luca stepped into the archway. He didn’t look surprised. He took the scene with one long, surgical sweep.

Althea. Torn dress barely held together by her own shaking fist, bruised cheek, bloodied mouth, eyes dazed.

Noah. Hands bloody, lips swollen, shirt slightly askew, standing far too close.

Luca’s jaw clenched. Rage flickered in his eyes - bright, sharp, instinctive. He buried it behind a lazy half-smile like he sheathed a knife.

“Well done, hero,” he murmured, voice low and edged. “You saved her.”

Noah went rigid.

Luca’s gaze slid back to Althea, lingered on the exposed skin above her torn neckline, and then jerked away with visible effort. His stare dropped instead to the blood in her hair, the handprint on her cheek. He swallowed once.

“But look at her now,” he went on softly. “Bloodied. Dress ruined. Barely standing.” He tilted his head. “What will your family say, Laurent? What will your father say when he sees the complication you’ve dragged into the light?”

The word landed like a stone.

Complication.

Noah’s father’s voice pressed into the space that had been filled with Althea’s breath:

We cannot afford a war with Sombra over your inability to keep your hands off their daughter.

Noah’s expression changed.

Althea felt it more than saw it.

The heat in him iced over. The hand on her back twitched, then went still. His shoulders straightened, the heir snapping back into place over the boy like someone had thrown a switch.

Her stomach dropped.

“Noah?” she whispered.

He stepped back.

Once. Twice.

He looked at her as if seeing, for the first time, not just the girl he wanted - but the problem she represented.

“God,” he said, hoarse. “What did I just - "

“You kissed me,” she said, her voice raw. “You stopped him, and then you kissed me.”

He flinched.

“I shouldn’t have,” he said. His voice sounded scraped clean of everything but horror. “I’m… I’m no better than he was.”

The world sliced.

The comparison to Adrian. To Holt.

“No,” she said immediately, fiercely. “Don’t you dare - "

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, cutting across her. “Althea, I’m so fucking sorry.”

For the kiss, she realized.

He was apologizing for the one part of the night that had felt like it might save her.

“I have to go,” he said.

Coward, something in her whispered, small and furious and heartbreakingly unsurprised.

He turned. He walked away. He didn’t run this time. It was worse.

The door closed quietly behind him. Silence rushed in.

Her knees gave out.

She slid down the wall, the silk pooling around her like spilled ink, a single broken sob tearing out of her chest before she bit down on the rest and tasted more blood.

Luca let out a breath he’d been holding since he walked in.

He stepped forward, stopping just out of reach.

“I told you,” he said softly. There was no triumph in it. Just a bleak, tired rage. “He always chooses his prison.”

She turned her head toward him, slowly, cheek throbbing.

Her eyes were glassy and sharp at the same time.

“You weren’t supposed to see this,” she rasped.

He huffed a humorless breath, “You think I was going to stay in the ballroom while you walked out shaking?” He studied her for a beat, chest tight. “You don’t get to break where I can’t see to pick up the pieces.”

He shrugged out of his jacket.

For a second, it looked like he might wrap it around her shoulders himself. He didn’t.

Instead, he knelt, careful to keep a slight distance, and set the jacket beside her.

“I’m not going to touch you,” he said quietly. “Not when you’ve had enough of men grabbing at you for one night.” His gaze flicked to her bruised cheek, then down. “But if you want it, it’s yours.”

She stared at the jacket.

Black. Perfectly cut. Still warm from his body.

“You’re bleeding, Mon coeur,” he added, even softer. The endearment carried something with it this time, years, history, devotion he hadn’t earned but was offering anyway. “Let me help you when you’re ready to let anyone.”

“Althea.”

Ricardo Sombra’s voice cut through the gallery.

Cold. Controlled.

Deadly.

He stood in the archway with the posture of a man who owned continents and had outlived every attempt to take them from him. Hiraya was at his right, face pale, eyes dark and furious. Odesa at his left, expression like carved ice, hands relaxed at her sides, the way a fighter’s were before a strike.

Ricardo’s gaze did not flick to the broken frame, or the door Adrian had fled through, or the space where Noah had stood.

His eyes went straight to his daughter. The rest of the world ceased to exist.

Althea, on the floor. Half-naked, clutching torn silk to her chest, blood on her mouth, a handprint on her cheek, her hair tangled and stained at the temple.

Something in this face went very, very still.

He moved.

He walked past Luca as if he were furniture. His gaze did flick down once, registering the jacket at Althea’s feet, the fact that she hadn’t taken it yet. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“Mr. Ashford,” Ricardo said, without looking at him.

Luca straightened. “Sir.”

“Thank you for your… proximity,” Ricardo said. The pause was surgical. “You may go.”

Dismissal, wrapped in courtesy.

Luca’s fingers curled once at his sides.

He bowed his head the bare fraction required to keep vomit-level politics intact. “Of course.”

His eyes met Althea’s for half a heartbeat. He let her see it then, briefly: the fury, the helpless ache, the promise that this was not the last time he was stepping into a room for her.

Then he turned and left the gallery, soundless.

Ricardo crouched in front of Althea.

He shed his jacket in one fluid movement and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling the lapels closed with surprisingly gentle hands. The wool was heavy, with a faint scent of cedar and the kind of cologne that clung to boardrooms and private jets. His thumb brushed the smear of blood from her lip.

His hand trembled.

“Who?” he asked.

One word.

Hiraya didn’t have to ask to know that her father was talking to her. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment. When she opened them, the softness was gone. Only Sombra remained.

“Adrian Holt,” she said.

Ricardo’s lips thinned into something like a smile and nothing like it at all.

“Of course,” he seethed.

He rose, still holding his jacket closed around her with one hand, and looked at Odesa.

“Find your mother,” he said, voice quiet and terrible. “The three of you will handle this.”

Odesa’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

Hiraya’s jaw tightened, but she nodded, eyes burning.

They both turned and slipped out of the gallery.

Storms wearing gowns.

Ricardo looked back down at Althea.

“You will come with me,” he said.

There was no room for argument in his tone.

He slid a hand to her back, helping her up with care that didn’t match the flatness of his voice. She swayed once; his grip tightened. He made sure the jacket stayed closed, his body angled to block any possible view from the hall.

As they left the gallery, she caught a last glimpse of the room over her shoulder. The cracked portrait. The blood on the floor. The jacket Luca had left, abandoned where she hadn’t chosen it.

Tears spilled quietly down her face, unnoticed by her father, or maybe very much noticed and ruthlessly ignored.

She had just been abandoned by the man who claimed to want to save her. And she was walking away between the man who would burn the world to protect her and the family who might very well burn her with it.