Chapter Thirty-One: The Weight of Her Name

She looked like me.

Same bone structure. Same eyes, but haunted.

Her body was thinner—malnourished. Her skin bore scars that looked like they had stories, but no one had ever asked.

The girl standing behind the glass wasn’t just a sister.

She was a question Reagan never let me ask.

“Ivy?” she said again, as if saying it once wasn’t enough to believe it.

I nodded, pressing my hand to the glass. “Yes. I’m real.”

Lucien’s hand curled around the small of my back, grounding me, but even he couldn’t anchor the storm in my chest.

She stepped closer, placing her palm against mine, only the barrier between us.

“I used to dream about you,” she whispered.

The sob that left me wasn’t clean or poetic. It was raw, jagged.

Lucien moved quickly to the control panel, searching for a way in.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She hesitated, and when she finally answered, it was like a knife slid beneath my skin.

“They called me Clara here. But I think that was just a file name.”

Clara. Light. A cruel irony for a girl raised in darkness.

Lucien unlocked the room.

She didn’t hesitate. She ran into my arms.

For a second, I forgot the blood. The secrets. The betrayal.

I held her like I’d held no one since my mother.

Like maybe this—this—was what I’d been fighting for all along.

Later, in the safe house, Clara sat curled on a couch wrapped in one of Lucien’s sweaters. It swallowed her whole.

She held a mug with both hands, staring into it like it held her missing years.

“I don’t know what’s real,” she said.

“You’re real,” I whispered. “And you’re not alone anymore.”

Lucien stood by the door, silent but ever alert.

Mira brought in files, photos, everything we could recover.

Project Seraphim wasn’t just an experiment.

It was a breeding ground.

A war of wombs.

My mother’s journal had hinted at it. But Clara’s existence proved it.

Reagan didn’t want a dynasty.

He wanted immortality.

“I remember a man,” Clara said. “He wore gloves and always called me ‘asset.’ He said I was built to watch. To endure. To become.”

She looked up, tears in her wide eyes. “But I don’t know who I am now.”

I moved to her. “You’re Clara. You’re my sister. And we’ll figure the rest out together.”

She blinked. “He always told me I wasn’t born. I was designed.”

Lucien spoke for the first time. “Even designed things can choose to burn their makers.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I stood on the balcony, the wind pulling at my robe, the city lights flickering like weak stars.

Lucien joined me, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind.

“She’s a child,” I whispered.

“She’s a survivor,” he corrected. “Like you.”

I turned in his arms. “Eryx knew about her. He’s been watching. Waiting.”

Lucien nodded. “And now the pieces are all in play.”

I looked up at him. “Do you still want this war?”

He didn’t flinch. “I want you. Everything else is noise.”

I leaned my head against his chest. “Then promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t let me become like him.”

Lucien kissed my hair. “You won’t. Because you still cry. You still hope. And you still rage for others.”

The next day, Clara began to speak more.

Not to everyone.

Only to me.

“I remember a girl screaming,” she said quietly. “In the room next to mine. They made her disappear after that.”

“Did you ever see her?”

“No,” she whispered. “But I think… I think her name was Serena.”

Mira flinched.

“Serena Blackwood?” I asked.

“The adopted one,” Mira confirmed. “She vanished in 2007. Everyone said she ran away.”

I shook my head. “No. She didn’t run. Reagan erased her.”

We were unraveling the entire tapestry.

Every string led to another corpse, another crown, another lie.

And in the center of it—

Clara.

She wasn’t just Reagan’s mistake.

She was his undoing.

We brought Clara to New York three days later under protection.

Lucien arranged a safe room beneath Blackwood Estate. Andrei doubled security.

But I could feel it.

The storm was coming.

Eryx wouldn’t let this go.

Not when we had the key to everything.

The night it happened, I woke to glass shattering.

Lucien was already out of bed, gun drawn.

I reached for mine.

Smoke billowed through the halls. Screams echoed from below.

I ran.

Clara’s room.

Two masked men.

One with a knife, dragging her.

I fired.

The first went down.

Lucien tackled the second.

Blood sprayed the wall.

Clara sobbed, curled in the corner.

I pulled her into my arms.

“You’re safe,” I whispered.

She looked up at me, her face pale with fear.

“He said… he said I belong to the Crown of Thorns.”

We cleaned the blood.

Lucien called Mira.

We traced the attackers to a faction loyal to Eryx—The Crown of Thorns, a secret order that believed in Reagan’s pure bloodline.

Their motto: What is made must obey.

Clara was their salvation.

I was their heretic.

Later, Clara sat on the edge of my bed.

“What if I’m not good, Ivy?” she asked.

I knelt before her. “Then we burn that idea out of your skin.”

Her lip trembled. “You promise?”

“I swear it,” I whispered. “You’re mine now. You’re family.”

And family doesn’t leave each other in fire.