Chapter 9: New Eyes, Old Foes

The conversation around the table flowed with the easy, glittering falseness that only old money could master.

Celeste Blackwood, draped in navy silk and diamonds, kept her fingers anchored to Elara’s hand, smoothing over her knuckles as if trying to mold her into a more pliable shape.

“You’ve grown so beautifully, dear,” Celeste said, her voice syrupy and thick with feigned affection. “You’ll fit in perfectly. We always knew you would.”

Elara offered a polite, hollow smile, sipping her champagne. The bubbles felt like needles on her tongue.

Across the table, Damien’s elder brother, Marcus, chuckled in that booming, arrogant way that had once made Elara shrink into her seat. “And here we thought you’d be a little mouse forever. Look at you now. A proper Blackwood jewel.”

Laughter scattered around the table like dry leaves. Selene, sitting awkwardly at the edge of the inner circle, forced a laugh a beat too late, her eyes darting between Elara and the brothers.

Elara tilted her head, letting the words roll off her shoulders, even as her heart burned with the cold fire of memory.

In her last life, Marcus had sneered at her during every family dinner, mocking her awkwardness and her "childish" dreams of management. Damien’s sister, Lydia, had once “accidentally” spilled red wine on Elara’s white dress at her first formal party, only to blame Elara for her own clumsiness. And Celeste… Celeste had pulled her aside in private, her voice like ice, warning her that "love" was a luxury Elara couldn't afford. Her only duty was to serve the Blackwood image.

And through it all, Selene had been there—whispering "comfort" while twisting the knife.

Now, these same people smiled at her as if they had adored her from the cradle. The taste of hypocrisy was sharper than the wine.

“So tell us, Elara,” Lydia piped up, her voice lilting with a hint of a trap. “Will you be taking a more… active role in VossTech now? Surely you’re not too overwhelmed, poor thing?”

A few of them laughed lightly, the sound condescending and soft.

Elara lifted her gaze slowly, her crimson dress gleaming like a warning under the chandelier light.

“I don’t find leadership overwhelming,” she said, her voice dipped in velvet and steel. “If anything, it’s refreshing to finally move things forward. Stagnation is what I find exhausting.”

A moment of tight, pressurized silence followed. Damien’s fingers brushed her arm under the table—a silent, possessive warning to temper her tone. She didn’t even flinch.

Then, the atmosphere in the ballroom shifted.

The grand double doors of the Astoria Grand swung open with a quiet but commanding force. Heads turned as a man entered the hall, his presence acting like a vacuum, sucking the air out of the room.

Cassian Vale.

He was dressed with a stark, brutal simplicity compared to the rest—an impeccably tailored black suit with no unnecessary embellishments. His tall frame carried the easy power of a man who never needed to raise his voice to dominate. His dark hair was swept back with casual precision, and his storm-gray eyes swept the crowd with clinical disinterest.

Around the table, disdain bloomed instantly. Celeste’s mouth tightened into a thin, ugly line. Marcus muttered a curse under his breath. Lydia rolled her eyes in theatrical boredom.

Elara, however, found herself staring.

Cassian Vale—who should have been a Blackwood by birth—had rejected the name entirely, taking his mother's after her death. His hatred for his father, and by extension Damien’s entire branch of the family, was the city’s most whispered scandal. No one spoke it aloud, but everyone knew: it was Celeste, the mistress-turned-wife, who had driven Cassian’s mother to an early grave.

He moved with an aura of untouchability. Elara’s mind flickered, unbidden, to the flashes from her past life—the desperate court battles after her parents' deaths. She remembered Cassian standing there, towering over a sea of predatory lawyers, his voice steady as he fought for her interests when no one else would.

She hadn’t understood his motives then. She had been too drugged, too manipulated. She understood them now.

“Careful,” Damien leaned closer, his breath warm against her ear, his voice a low, venomous hiss. “You’re staring, Elara.”

Elara didn’t look away from Cassian. “So?”

Damien stiffened, his fingers digging slightly into the tablecloth. He was caught off guard; she wasn’t supposed to question him. She never had.

“He’s our enemy,” Damien hissed, as if the word itself were a contagion.

Elara finally turned to him, her gaze calm and utterly unbothered.

“And what makes him our enemy, Damien? Why does your grievance extend to me?” she asked, her voice soft but dangerous, laced with a quiet defiance that echoed louder than a shout.

Damien blinked, his mouth slightly agape.

In their old life, she would have nodded meekly. She would have accepted his judgment as her own and spent the rest of the night avoiding Cassian’s gaze to prove her loyalty. She would have been his perfect, hollow puppet.

But that girl was buried in the past.

Damien stared at her, truly seeing the shift for the first time. Something inside him itched—a restless, growing confusion. This wasn’t the woman he had spent years grooming into submission.

He didn't know whether to feel fear… or fury.