Chapter 2

The reception blurred past her in pieces, champagne flutes pressed into her hand. They left untouched, a hundred congratulations from people who thought they were speaking to Olivia, the photographer’s flash catching her mid-flinch in what would later become the official wedding portrait.

Amelia smiled until her face ached. She left herself be kissed on both cheeks by men she’d never met and women who called her “darling” with the easy familiarity of people who’d known her sister since childhood. Every second felt like standing on ice thin enough to hear it cracking beneath her heels.

Adrain stayed close, one hand at the small of her back, steering her through the crowd within the practiced ease of a man who’d spent his whole life performing for rooms like this one. He never once looked at her the way a groom looks at his bride.

It wasn't until the last guest had been ushered out, the string quartet packed away, and the garden emptied of everyone but caterers stripping tablecloths in the dark, that he finally spoke to her directly.

“My study. Now.”

It wasn't a request.

Amelia followed him through Kingston Villa’s east wing, her sister’s wedding dress dragging heavy and foreign against her legs, until he closed the study door behind them with a quiet, deliberate click.

“Explain,” Adrian said, “very quickly, why I just married the wrong sister.”

Amelia’s carefully held composure finally cracked. “You want me to explain? You're the one who knew. You looked right at me and said nothing.”

“Answer the question.”

“Olivia’s gone.” The word came out rougher than she intended, exhaustion and fear finally catching up to her all at once. “She left a note this morning. I can't marry him. Don't look for me. My grandmother found out twenty minutes before the ceremony and decided that the wedding was more important than finding her.”

Something shifted behind Adrian’s eyes, not surprised, Amelia realized. Confirmation.

“You already knew she was gone,” Amelia said slowly. “Didn't you?”

Adrian didn't answer directly. He crossed to the window instead, looking out over the darkened garden where five hundred people had just watched him marry a stranger.

“If I had stopped that wedding today,” he said finally, “your sister would be dead within the week.”

The room went very still.

“What?”

“I don't have time to explain everything tonight, and you wouldn't believe me if I did.” He turned back to her face, and for the first time, something almost like exhaustion showed through the careful control. “What I need you to understand is this: as far as anyone outside this room is concerned, the wedding happened exactly as planned. Olivia Carter married Adrian Kingston today. That belief is the only thing currently keeping your sister alive.”

Amelia’s throat tightened. “Then tell me where she is. Tell me who’s threatening her.

“I don't know where she is,” For the first time, his voice lost its edge, something rawer bleeding through. “That's the truth. I know why she ran. I don't know where she went.”

“Then let me look for her.”

“No.” The word came fast, sharp. “You so much as breathe her name to the wrong person, and everything I did today to buy her time falls apart. Do you understand why I’m telling you?”

Amelia stared at him, at this stranger she’d just legally bound her life to, and felt something cold settle inside her chest. “You’re telling me I married a man who knows exactly what happened to my sister and won't tell me anything.

“I’m telling you,” Adrian said quietly, “that you're safer not knowing. And so is she.”

“That's not your decision to make.”

“It's now.” He said it without cruelty, but the words landed with a horrible, familiar echo… the exact phrase her grandmother had used hours earlier, forcing her into a dress that wasn't hers, a life that wasn't hers.

Amelia felt something in her harden.

“Fine,” she said. “You want to keep your secrets. Keep them. But I am not going to sit in this house pretending to be my sister while you decide what I’m allowed to know about her safety. Suppose you won't tell me the truth. I'll find it myself.”

For a long moment, Adrian simply looked at her, really looked, the way he didn't during the entire ceremony, the entire reception, every careful public performance of the day.

“You remind me of her,” he said finally. “More than you think. She said almost exactly that to me once.”

“Is that a warning?”

“It's an observation.” He moved past her towards the door, pausing just before he reached it. “Your room is the east guest suite. Someone will show you. This marriage exists for exactly one reason, Mrs Kingston, and it has nothing to do with either of us.”

He left her standing alone in the study, the weight of her sister's name and her sister's dress and her sister’s ring settling over her at all once, in a house full of strangers she still believed she was someone else entirely.

Amelia stood there long after his footsteps had faded down the corridor, staring at the closed door, replaying the two words that had unsettled her more than anything else he’d said all night. Mrs.Kingston. Not Amelia. Not even Olivia. A name that belonged to neither of them, and yet was somehow now legally, irreversibly hers.

She thought of the more still folded in her clutch, tucked away before the ceremony because she hadn't been able to bring herself to leave it behind. I’m sorry. I can't marry him. Please don't look for me.

Olivia had known something. Had been frightened enough by it to disappear without a word, without even telling the sister she'd shared a womb with. And now Amelia was living inside the exact life her sister had run away from, sleeping under the same roof, wearing the same name, married to the same man who apparently knew far more about her all of it than he was willing to say.

She wiped her eyes, straightened her spine, and made herself a quiet promise before she went looking for the east guest suite.

Whatever Adrian Kingston was protecting her from, she was going to find out. With or without his permission.