Chapter 6

GARRET’S POV

The moment my door shut, I let the weight fall off my shoulders.

I knelt by the bed, hands trembling as I reached beneath it, past the wooden panel I’d built myself so no servant would ever stumble on it by mistake. My fingers found the frame. I pulled it out slowly, like it might crumble if I moved too fast.

Selene.

Her portrait stared back at me the way it always did. Soft brown eyes. That stubborn tilt of her chin she wore even when she was afraid. I used to tell her she smiled like she was daring the world to disagree with her.

I hadn’t looked at this painting in months. I told myself I didn’t need to. That the years had finally dulled the ache enough to let it rest.

Then Margaret walked through my doors last night, and every wall I’d built came crashing down in the space of a single breath.

How possible could it be? I’d always heard of my step son's wife whom he treats with ridicule. Her name was popular across borders and realms. I’d never seen her because Zach didn’t let me attend the wedding. But from the stories I heard, she wasn’t his true bride. 

Seeing her now for the first time only sparked something old lying within me. 

She had Selene’s eyes. Selene’s height. The same soft roundness to her face, the same way of holding herself like she expected to be struck for existing too loudly.

“Impossible,” I whispered to the portrait, like Selene herself might answer. 

I traced the frame’s edge, the wood worn smooth from years of this exact ritual. I felt more than guilt ripping through me. It came with grief, with a deep sensational longing that I couldn’t describe. All of it dressed up as a private meeting between a man and a memory he refused to let go of. I stared at the image far too long, going through a series of memories in my head just as always. 

I didn’t hear the door.

“Brother?”

I nearly dropped the frame. By the time I turned, I’d already shoved it half under the blanket, clumsy, useless. Corvina stood in my doorway, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised in a way that told me she’d already seen everything she needed to see.

“Knocking exists for a reason,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it.

“So does honesty.” She crossed the room without asking, the way she always did, the way she’d done since we were children fighting over the same toys. Her eyes dropped to the blanket, to the corner of the frame still peeking out. “Still keeping her under your bed, Garret? After all these years?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s never nothing with you.” She sat at the edge of my bed, uninvited, the same way she used to sit at the edge of my childhood bed when nightmares chased me awake. “You saw the girl last night. Ryan’s guest. I saw your face when you left for your room. I’m sure right now, you’re thinking the goddess has sent you someone to compensate you for your past.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You forget I raised you as much as our mother did.” Corvina’s voice softened, the sharp edges I usually got from her sanded down into something almost gentle. “You looked at her like you’d seen a ghost.”

“Because I have.” The words left me before I could stop them. I sat down heavily beside her, the portrait still trapped beneath the blanket between us, a secret neither of us bothered pretending wasn’t there. “Corvina, she looks like her. Exactly like her.”

“Coincidence happens.”

“Not like this.” I rubbed my face with both hands. “The eyes. The way she stands when she thinks no one’s looking. Even her voice carries the same weight Selene’s did. All through the night, I tried to shake that feeling off. I tried to sleep with my heart in place. But something tells me this girl is not just who we see her to be. There has to be more.” 

“You’re paranoid,” 

“Call it whatever you want! Yes, you can keep blaming me for Selene’s death! But it doesn’t change the fact that I loved her. Yet, her family treated me like I was nothing.” 

Corvina studied me for a long moment, and for once, there was no accusation in it. Just an old, tired sadness that matched my own. “Have you considered,” she said carefully, “that maybe fate isn’t finished with you yet?”

“Fate finished with me the night my wife disappeared.” I stood, needing the distance, needing something to do with my hands besides shake. 

“Which of them? Linda, Ryan’s mother. Or is it Aurla the shewolf, Zach’s mother?”

“Both disappeared. For all I know, they’re dead. This lady who walked in here last night looked nothing like both. She looks like Selene. I won’t chase ghosts, Corvina. Not again.”

“Then don’t chase her.” Corvina rose too, straightening her sleeves, her tone sliding back into its usual sharpness. “Just don’t destroy her either. Not the way you destroyed—”

A knock cut her off. A servant peered in, bowing quickly. “My king. Dinner is served. The council awaits.”

I nodded, grateful for the interruption, grateful for anything that pulled me out of that room and away from the portrait still hidden beneath my sheets like a sin I refused to confess.

The dining hall buzzed with the low murmur of council voices by the time I arrived. Ryan sat already, jaw tight, the way it always was after a morning spent arguing with someone about something he refused to name. Corvina took her seat across from him, entirely too pleased with herself for someone who’d just watched me nearly unravel in my own bedroom.

“My king,” Elder Voss said as I sat, “we’ve been discussing the matter of the empty seat.”

“Which matter,” I said, though I already knew.

“The Queen’s seat,” Voss said. “It sat empty for too long. The realm grows restless without a consort beside you.”

Plates arrived. Wine was poured. I let the conversation wash over me, half-listening, still thinking of Selene’s painted eyes staring up at me from beneath a blanket three floors above this hall.

“Speaking of consorts,” Corvina said, far too casually, “perhaps the answer is closer than we think. A lady walks…”

“Aunt Corvina,” Ryan said, warning already in his voice.

“I’m simply saying,” she continued, undeterred, “we have a guest living under this roof. A woman of noble bearing, despite what she’s been through. Margaret. I believe she was the ex-wife of Garret’s werewolf step-son, Zach.”

The table went quiet. Even the servants slowed near the far wall.

“She is a guest,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Nothing more.”

“For now,” Corvina said.

“Forever,” I corrected. “You know the law, sister. A Lycan cannot bind themselves to a werewolf. The bloodline suffers for it. Every single time.”

“The law,” Corvina repeated, tasting the word like it disgusted her.

“The law is true because I broke it once,” I said, sharper now. “I loved a werewolf woman after Ryan’s mother. You remember what happened to her. We all saw how the curse of the law took her away without a trace because I disobeyed.”

Ryan’s fork stilled against his plate. He said nothing, but I caught the flicker of unease across his face.

“I have zero interest in repeating history,” I said. 

Ryan spoke, quiet but firm. “Margaret isn’t a political solution, Aunt Corvina. She’s a person who’s already survived enough without being auctioned off for a throne.”

“How noble,” Corvina said, though her eyes never left me. “Tell me, Garret. Is it truly the law that frightens you? Or is it that the girl looks exactly like Selene, and you’re terrified of what it means?”

The hall went utterly silent.

My hand came down on the table before I’d decided to move it, the crash of it rattling every plate, every glass, every startled breath around us. Wine sloshed over the rim of my cup, dark red bleeding into white linen like an old wound reopening.

“Enough,” I said, low and dangerous. “You forget yourself, Corvina.”

She didn’t flinch. She never did. That was the trouble with my sister; she’d learned long ago that my anger was mostly noise, mostly grief wearing a crown it didn’t want.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, until Elder Voss cleared his throat, clearly desperate to steer us elsewhere.

“Speaking of the guest,” he said carefully, glancing between us like a man testing ice before he stepped onto it. “Where is she, exactly? Lady Margaret. Shouldn’t she be joining us?”

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