Chapter Twenty-Four: The Thorn Reigns Quietly

The morning Lucien disappeared, the sun rose blood-orange over the Blackwood estate.

I watched it from behind the frosted window in our bedroom—his bedroom—wrapped in silence so dense it felt sacred. My breath fogged the glass as the world stretched into light, but inside me, everything stayed dark.

He was gone.

No guards knew when he left. No cameras recorded his exit. Even the staff moved quietly, as if mourning something they didn’t have the words to name.

They all avoided my eyes.

Maybe they saw it now. What I was. Whose daughter I was.

Reagan’s blood. Lucien’s enemy. His lover.

I pressed my fingers to the glass, letting the cold seep in.

Reagan hadn’t needed to pull a trigger. He’d only needed one truth.

A truth sharp enough to tear Lucien’s heart from mine.

And I… I hadn’t stopped it.

I spent that morning wandering the halls like a shadow dressed in silk.

Everywhere I turned, Lucien’s absence echoed.

His whiskey glass on the mantel, still half full.

A pen left on the desk in the library, ink dried into a blot of mourning.

His scent still lingered in the sheets.

But the man?

Gone.

And in his place: silence. Perfect and brutal.

By noon, the portrait changed again.

Now the woman with my face stood in the center of a chessboard.

A crown of thorns around her head.

A king’s corpse at her feet.

A single move remained unplayed.

My hand trembled as I reached out to touch the canvas, but I stopped just short. Somehow, I knew the paint would still be wet.

He’s watching.

Somewhere, Reagan Blackwood was watching.

And waiting.

I didn’t cry.

I refused to cry.

Tears were currency in this house, and I would not spend mine on a man who walked away without a word.

But that didn’t stop the ache in my chest from blooming wider by the hour.

Lucien had kissed me like I was air.

Had held me like I was gravity.

Had touched me like I was the only real thing in his world of shadows.

And now? He’d vanished like one of them.

I went back to the vault that night.

Something about that place called to me now—like my mother’s voice trapped between steel walls.

I opened the trunk again and found a final envelope. Smaller than the rest. Thinner.

It was sealed in wax the color of dried roses.

Inside, one line written in my mother’s looping script:

If you ever doubt who you are, look for me where the moon breaks the sea.

I blinked.

What did that even mean?

A riddle? A clue?

Or just the last lullaby of a woman unraveling?

I tucked the note into my pocket and left the vault.

But something followed me out.

Not footsteps. Not voices.

A feeling.

Like I’d opened a door that could never be closed.

By the third day of Lucien’s absence, I stopped asking where he went.

I started asking why.

Why now?

Why me?

Why did Reagan’s words carry more weight than mine?

Why didn’t Lucien fight?

On the fourth night, a new package arrived.

Unmarked. No return address.

Inside: a single photo.

Lucien. In Rome.

Sitting across from a man I didn’t recognize.

But the back of the photo was what made my knees buckle.

Written in blood-red ink:

He’s choosing his crown. Not you.

I didn’t sleep.

I didn’t eat.

I just sat in the library with every letter, every lie, and every version of myself I no longer recognized.

That morning, Julian arrived.

Lucien’s younger cousin. The one no one spoke about.

Too soft, too sentimental.

But there he was, in the flesh, stepping into the drawing room like a ghost wearing a smile.

“I heard my brother ran,” he said cheerfully.

I narrowed my eyes. “He’s not your brother.”

“No. But I know him better than you think.”

He walked closer, looked around at the torn papers, scattered letters.

“I see Reagan’s doing his usual trick. Seduce the girl, then destroy the man.”

“Reagan didn’t seduce me.”

Julian tilted his head. “Didn’t he?”

I stepped closer. “Why are you here?”

“To warn you. The war you think you’re fighting isn’t about blood. It’s about narrative.”

He leaned in.

“And right now, Reagan is telling your story. One Lucien might believe.”

I threw him out.

But his words stayed.

Reagan was crafting a story. A mythology. A tragedy.

And I was its villain.

Unless I changed the ending.

That night, I took my mother’s final note to the roof of the estate. The highest point.

From there, I could see the ocean in the far distance, gleaming under moonlight.

Where the moon breaks the sea…

I ran to the coastal cliffs the next morning.

No security.

No hesitation.

Just instinct.

At the edge, where the cliffs bowed toward the water like a cathedral made of salt and wind, I saw it:

An old telescope mounted in rusted iron. Weathered. Abandoned.

Except it wasn’t.

There was something tucked inside the lens cap.

I pulled it out.

A memory card.

I stared at it.

This is it. This is what she meant.

Back at the estate, I inserted it into Lucien’s encrypted laptop.

It whirred to life like it recognized me.

The file opened automatically.

A video.

Grainy. Dated fifteen years ago.

In it, my mother stands beside Reagan Blackwood.

She’s crying.

He’s holding a baby.

Not me.

A boy.

And then I hear it.

My mother’s voice: “He doesn’t know you’re raising him for the slaughter, does he?”

Reagan: “He’ll thank me one day. My son will inherit what I never could.”

The camera pans.

To a mirror.

The baby… has Lucien’s eyes.

My breath caught.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Was it possible?

Was Lucien… Reagan’s son?

Then what was I?

---

I replayed it three times before I realized someone was behind me.

Lucien.

Standing in the doorway.

His hair disheveled.

His eyes haunted.

“I hoped you’d never find that,” he said softly.

I turned.

My voice broke. “What is this?”

He walked to me. Took the laptop. Closed it.

“It’s the reason my mother died.”

I couldn’t speak.

He placed a hand on the desk beside me. Not touching. Just anchoring.

“She found out Reagan was grooming me. Manipulating me to take down my own father. To take the empire. To burn it from within.”

“And the baby?”

He looked at me.

His eyes, for once, wide open.

“That wasn’t me.”

I blinked. “Then who—?”

He exhaled. “That’s the real heir.”