Chapter Three

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰’𝐬 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡

The silence that followed the note sliding under my door was louder than any scream.

I stared at the crude crayon drawing; the red Xs over the mother’s eyes, the chilling claim that she was still within these walls. My breath hitched; a jagged sound in the tomb-like stillness of my room.

He didn't kill her. She’s in the North Room.

I looked at the hospital bill on my nightstand. This was the moment I should have packed my bags. I should have climbed out the window, run past the gravel driveway, and never looked back.

But the locket; the broken gold chain still biting into my palm held me captive. If my mother had lied about my face, she had lied about everything. And the only man with the answers was the monster currently smashing glass in the dining hall.

I waited until the sounds of Killian’s rage subsided into a heavy, suffocating quiet.

Creeping to the door, I pressed my ear against the cold oak and I heard nothing.

I turned the handle; the click sounded like a gunshot in the corridor. I stepped out with my bare feet sinking into the thick, expensive carpet.

The manor felt different at night. The shadows seemed to stretch; reaching out from the corners like obsidian fingers.

I headed North.

The air grew colder the further I walked. The heating didn't seem to reach this wing, or perhaps the house itself was trying to freeze out the secrets hidden here.

I reached the end of the corridor. The door was unlike the others; it was reinforced with heavy iron bands, looking more like a vault than a bedroom.

My hand hovered over the handle. Don't enter the locked room, Killian had warned.

"Looking for something, Elara?"

I spun around with a gasp dying in my throat.

Killian was standing in the shadows of an alcove, his silhouette cutting a terrifying figure against the moonlight filtering through the high windows.

He wasn't wearing his jacket anymore. His white shirt was unbuttoned halfway with his tie hanging loose around his neck like a noose.

In his hand, he gripped a crystal decanter of an amber liquid. He looked unraveled and dangerous.

"I... I heard a noise," I lied; my heart hammered against my ribs so hard it hurt.

"Liar," he breathed, stepping into the light. The "Ice King" was gone and replaced by something far more volatile.

He walked toward me with the scent of expensive bourbon and raw grief preceding him.

He didn't stop until he had pinned me against the iron-bound door. He slammed his hand against the wood next to my head with the impact of vibrating through my skull.

"You have her eyes," he hissed, his gaze searching mine with a desperate, hungry intensity.

"Every time you look at me, it’s like she’s clawing her way out of the dirt to haunt me. Why are you here? Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me!" I yelled, trying to push against his chest. It was like trying to move a mountain.

"I needed a job! I needed to save my mother! I didn't even know who you were until I saw your face in a magazine!"

Killian grabbed my wrists, pinning them above my head. It was a physical weight.

His touch was electric, a searing heat that made my skin crawl and burn all at once. "You expect me to believe in coincidences?

In this world, Elara, coincidences are just well-disguised traps. You wear her face, you wear her locket, and you walk into my home just as my daughter is losing her mind?"

"Maybe the universe wants you to face what you did!" I snapped, my fear turned into a razor-edged fury.

I looked him dead in the eye, refusing to flinch. "What’s in this room, Killian? Is she in there? Is your wife rotting behind this door while you play the grieving widower?"

The silence that followed was absolute. Killian’s grip tightened on my wrists, his knuckles turned white. For a second, I thought he might actually hurt me. His jaw was set so hard I could hear his teeth grinding.

Then, he laughed. It was a hollow, broken sound that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"You want to see?" he whispered, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly soft register. "You want to know the 'secret' that three nannies couldn't handle?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, antique key. He didn't let go of my wrists as he slotted it into the lock. The mechanism turned with a heavy, metallic thud. He kicked the door open and dragged me inside.

I prepared myself for prison. I prepared for a sickroom or a crime scene.

Instead, the room was a shrine.

Thousands of white lilies, withered and brown, filled the space; their cloying, rot-sweet scent made my stomach turn.

The walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and every single one of them had been shattered. In the center of the room stood a crib, but it wasn't for a baby. It was filled with the same eyeless dolls Rose carried.

But that wasn't the twist.

In the center of the room sat a woman. She was back-to-face in her long, dark hair spilling over a white silk nightgown.

She was rocking back and forth, humming a tune that sounded like a funeral dirge.

"Vanessa?" I whispered with my voice trembling.

The woman turned.

She didn't have my face. She didn't have a face at all. Her head was a smooth, porcelain mask; the same one Rose’s dolls wore. She wasn't a person. She was a life-sized mannequin, dressed in the late Mrs. St. Claire’s clothes.

"She’s been dead for six months," Killian said, his voice cracking as he released my wrists. He walked over to the mannequin and touched its hair with a tenderness that broke my heart. "But my daughter thinks she’s still here. She talks to the walls. She brings her food. And I... I couldn't let go. I kept the room exactly as it was the night she took her own life."

I felt a wave of nausea. This wasn't a murder mystery; it was a haunting of the living. "Killian... this is morbid. You’re feeding Rose’s delusion. You’re killing her with this."

Killian turned to me, his eyes bloodshot. "I loved her, Elara. She was the only thing that made this empire worth having.

And then I found out she was working for my enemies. She was the one who leaked the data that nearly bankrupted the St. Claires. She didn't die of a broken heart. She died because she was caught."

He stepped toward me, his hand reaching out to touch my hair, his touch almost reverent.

"But then you walked in. With her face. With her locket. And for a moment, I thought... I thought the debt could be paid in blood."

"What debt?" I whispered, backed against the shattered mirrors.

"The Vance debt," he said, his voice turning cold again. "Your mother didn't tell you, did she?

Your father wasn't a librarian, Elara. He was the man who drove the getaway car the night my parents were murdered. And you... You were the child in the backseat."

The world tilted. The "Meaningful Core Struggle" shifted from survival to a legacy of blood.

My father; the man I barely remembered was a murderer? And Killian hadn't hired me to be a nanny. He had hired me for Revenge.

"You’re lying," I choked out, tears finally stinging my eyes.

"I don't lie about blood, Elara," he said, pinning me against the mirrors again.

The glass shards bit into the silk of my dress, but I didn't care.

He leaned in, his lips brushing mine, a kiss that tasted like salt and vengeance.

"You’re not here to save your mother. You’re here to pay for what your father did. And I’m going to make sure every second you spend in this house is a living hell."

He pulled back, his eyes burning with a cruel triumph. "Now, go back to your room. Tomorrow, the 'Love After Marriage' begins. We’re getting married, Elara.

A contract to merge our debts. You get the money for your mother, and I get the pleasure of watching the Vance bloodline serve the St. Claires for the rest of eternity."

He walked out, locking the door from the outside, leaving me trapped in the room of shattered mirrors with the faceless mannequin of his dead wife.

I sank to the floor, my heart started screaming. I was "Bound to Killian St. Claire," but not by love. I was bound by a sin I didn't commit, in a marriage that was a death sentence.

But as I looked at the mannequin, I noticed something. In its porcelain hand, it was clutching a real, crumpled piece of paper. I crawled over and snatched it.

It was a birth certificate. My birth certificate.

But the name of the father wasn't my father. It was Arthur St. Claire. Killian’s father.

I wasn't the daughter of a murderer. I was Killian’s half-sister. Or... I was the rightful heir to the throne he was sitting on.

This was a lightning bolt. If we were siblings, he couldn't marry me. But if he didn't know... I was about to walk into an incestuous trap set by a man who hated me.