Chapter 4

Elena's POV

My hand came down, and Sophia did not flinch. The crack split the silence in the attic. Sophia's face swung to the side, a red mark blooming across her cheek.

I hadn't even pulled my hand back when the attic door slammed open. Adrian stood in the doorway with several of his guards behind him, and cold air swept in from the corridor and locked around me.

I understood then. She had planned for this, too.

Sophia brought her hand to her cheek and the tears came instantly. "Sister. Why would you do this to me?"

I went still, and only then did I see it clearly. She hadn't said those things to gloat. She'd said them to make me snap. She needed Adrian to see me strike her with his own eyes.

Adrian's expression went terrifying. He walked in, step by steady step. "Elena. When are you going to stop?"

"Sophia admitted it," I said. "She admitted right now that the person who saved you wasn't her."

Sophia shook her head, fresh tears falling. "I never said that." She looked up at Adrian, her voice breaking. "I only came to talk her out of leaving. I wanted her to stay. She was hurting so badly — I understood that. But then she just hit me, and she used her bloodline abilities."

Sophia's voice caught, as if she could hold herself together no longer. Then she slowly lowered the hand covering her face. Beside the reddened mark from my slap, there were now several thin, precise cuts, and blood welled in them, slow and deliberate.

My eyes narrowed. Those weren't from me. I had slapped her, and that was all. I hadn't drawn on my bloodline abilities.

Sophia looked up at Adrian, trembling. "Have I been disfigured? Adrian, it hurts so much."

Adrian moved to her immediately. He cupped her face with both hands and examined the cuts with quiet, focused attention, and the tenderness in his crimson eyes — the kind I'd never once received — went through me like something sharp.

"Don't be afraid. I'll have a physician here immediately. You won't scar."

Sophia pressed her face into his chest and wept. "It's not her fault. She just hates me so much."

I watched the two of them and felt something absurd and hollow open in my chest. "I didn't use my power."

Adrian lifted his eyes to me. They were glacial. "You're still making excuses?" "I only hit her once. Those cuts aren't mine."

Sophia, still in his arms, quietly sobbed. "Sister, I don't blame you. If you really can't bear this, if you don't want to leave, I'll go to Mother and Father myself. I'll go to Lord Lucien and apologize. You won't have to marry him."

Every word was gracious and generous. But she had never had any intention of letting me walk out of this house alive.

Sophia seemed to notice, as if just remembering, my packed bag sitting beside the bed. She moved toward it. "Let me put these away for you." I snapped my head up. "Don’t touch my things."

But she was already leaning down, reaching for it: slowly, delicately, every movement a performance for Adrian, the long-suffering little sister doing her best for someone who hated her.

She placed my mother's book back into the trunk and folded my worn dresses one by one. "These are all the things you care about, aren't they, Sister. Don't go anywhere for now. If you still want to marry Adrian, I won't fight you for him."

Her voice cracked into a soft cry. She stumbled, as though her legs had given out, and knocked into the old trunk. It toppled with a bang.

Everything scattered across the floor, and the handkerchief that had been at the very bottom drifted out and came to rest at Adrian's feet.

I went cold all over.

Sophia blinked at it, as if startled. "What is this?" Adrian bent and picked it up, and his expression changed.

He recognized it: that day in the garden when I'd been mocked for what I was, crying and barely holding myself together, and he had walked over and held it out. That was the day I decided he was the closest thing to salvation I had ever known.

But now he held the handkerchief and looked at me with nothing in his expression but evaluation.

Sophia pressed a hand over her mouth, tears still on her face. "Sister, you've kept Adrian's things all this time." She said it softly, quietly enough for the guards at the door to hear every word. "No wonder you couldn't accept the new arrangement. You've always..."

She didn't finish. But that small, deliberate pause was worse than finishing.

Adrian's hand closed around the handkerchief. "Elena. How long are you going to hold on to the past?" "I wasn't trying to hold on. That's yours. You gave it to me." "I know." He looked at me, his voice perfectly level. "I helped a crying child in a garden once. It was just common decency. It didn't mean anything more than that. "

My body went rigid. Just common decency. All those years I had held on to that one memory, all those nights in the attic telling myself he would come back for me — that had been all it ever was.

In his eyes, it was just common decency. Every promise he once made, to wed and protect me in the future, was now lightly denied altogether.

Adrian dropped the handkerchief on the floor. "The woman I love is Sophia. Stop reaching for things that were never yours."

The handkerchief settled in the dust, and the last shred of dignity I'd been keeping alive landed with it.

Sophia moved to his side and took his sleeve. "Adrian, don't be angry with her. She's just been so lonely. But honestly, I'm a little frightened now. She's hurt my face. What if next time it's someone else?"

Adrian didn't answer immediately, but I watched the shift behind his eyes and understood. Whatever he had almost felt for me in that one moment was gone.

I laughed, very softly, because there was nothing else left.

Adrian looked at me, his voice composed and measured and completely without warmth. "Your half-blood power has been uncontrolled for years. Tonight you attacked your own family. Since you can't govern your own abilities, I will do it for you."