Chapter 15: The One Who Knew

Aurelia's POV

I went to Rosa's the next afternoon, mostly because I needed somewhere that didn't feel like it was watching me.

I sat at her small kitchen table, the same table where I used to do my homework as a child. In front of me was the same chipped blue mug that had always been mine.

She poured soup into two bowls and sat across from me then she waited, just as she always did, she never asked questions directly. Instead, she let the silence encourage me to open up on my own.

"There's my girl," she said, wiping her hands on her apron and pulling me into a hug that smelled like flour and lavender. "You look like you haven't eaten a proper meal in a week."

"I've eaten."

"Standing up, alone, at a kitchen counter doesn't count as a proper meal, Aurelia." She pulled back and studied my face the way she always did, like she was reading something written just beneath the skin. "Sit. I made soup."

I sat at her small kitchen table, the same one I'd done homework at as a girl, the same chipped blue mug set down in front of me that had been mine for as long as I could remember.

She ladled soup into two bowls and sat across from me, waiting, letting the silence do the work of pulling things out of me instead of asking outright.

"Vivienne cornered me in the garden the other night," I said finally, because it was easier to start there than anywhere closer to the truth. "Made it very clear she's watching me."

"Watching you do what?"

"I don't know exactly. Existing, apparently."

Rosa made a small, unimpressed sound in her throat, the same one she'd been making about Vivienne Blackthorne since before I ever married into that family. "That woman has spent her whole life watching other people so closely she never had to look at herself."

"She's not wrong to watch, though....not entirely."

Rosa looked up from her soup. "What does that mean?"

I turned my spoon over in the bowl, buying myself a second I didn't really have.

"Kael's back," I said finally. "I don't think I've told you properly. He's.....he's Cassian's stepbrother, Rosa. Richard's son. He's been working with Cassian since he came back, and I've been helping coordinate the gala, so we've been together in the same rooms more often than I'd like."

Rosa's spoon stopped halfway to her bowl. For a long moment she just looked at me, something shifting behind her eyes as the pieces clearly settled into place.

"Kael," she said slowly, testing the name like she needed to make sure it still meant what she thought it meant. "*Your* Kael. He's part of that family? He's Cassian's brother?"

"Stepbrother. Yes."

"Dear God." She set the spoon down entirely, pressing a hand flat against the table like she needed something solid to hold onto. "I had no idea....all this time I thought he'd gone off somewhere far away and stayed there. I never imagined he'd end up standing in the same rooms as you again, let alone under the same roof as your husband's Stepbrother."

"Neither did I....not until he walked out of that elevator."

"How long have you known it was him?"

"Since the day he came back. Weeks now."

"And you're just telling me this now?"

"I didn't know how to say it out loud, saying it makes it real."

Rosa sat back in her chair, exhaling slowly, her sharp eyes softening into something more worried than shocked now that the initial surprise had settled. "Tell me the rest, then. However much of it there is."

"We've had some of the planning meetings alone. He drove me home once, in the rain, when my car didn't show." I hesitated, my throat tightening. "Rosa, it feels like nothing's changed. Like I never stopped....."

I stopped myself before the sentence finished, horrified at what I'd almost said out loud.

Rosa reached across the table and covered my hand with hers, warm and steady, the way she'd done a hundred times before.

"You don't have to finish it," she said quietly. "I think I already understand well enough."

"Rosa, I'm married."

"I know that." Her thumb moved gently over my knuckles. "I'm not telling you what to do with what you're feeling, Aurelia. I raised you to make your own choices, even the hard ones, I'm only telling you that whatever this is, you're not in danger from feeling it....you're only in danger the moment you stop being honest with yourself about what it actually is."

I sat there a long time after that, the soup going cold between us, Rosa's hand still resting over mine.

"Does anyone else know?" I asked finally. "That there was ever anything between me and him, before?"

"No one," she said. "Just me, since the day you first told me about him, years ago. I've kept it to myself this whole time, and I'll go on keeping it, if that's what you need."

She paused, studying my face carefully, the worry back in her eyes now that the shock had passed.

"But secrets like this have a way of costing more the longer you carry them, sweetheart. Especially this one, now that I know exactly how tangled up it's become, I just want you to be ready, whenever it finally comes due."