All Chapters of THE PRICE FOR HIS NAME : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Dinner had ended. The table had been cleared, the dishes put away, and the house had settled into its usual post-meal routine. The warm scent of roasted lamb and garlic still lingered in the air, mixing with the faint hint of vanilla from the candle Maria had blown out before leaving the dining room. In the living room, Ella sat cross-legged on the floor, helping Ivy and Iris with their homework. The twins sprawled out beside her, their little legs kicking absentmindedly as they whined about long division. "Why do we even need math, Aunty Ella?" Iris grumbled, tapping her pencil against her workbook. "So you don’t get swindled when you start spending your father’s money," Ella replied without missing a beat. Ivy gasped dramatically. "People would steal from us?" "Absolutely." Ella turned the page. "Now

Fiero dropped his phone onto the bed with a dull clunk, the sound swallowed by the plush sheets beneath it. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just sat there, the tension crawling beneath his skin like static, fingers twitching at his sides. Then without looking, he reached for her. Joy. Already curled up beside him like she owned the bed. Like she owned him. And maybe she did. She always had. They’d known each other since they were babies—back when their mothers would leave them in a playpen in the sunroom and joke about arranged marriages. Fiero had pulled her pigtails at four, thrown a mud pie at her at five, and punched a boy for calling her bossy at six. She’d scratched his face with a pencil in second grade. He still had the faint scar beneath his jaw. His fingers slipped into her locs now, the motion rougher than he meant it to be, but she didn’t flinch. She never flinched. Her eyes stayed on him—watchful, amused, dangerous. “You good?” she asked softly, voice thick with

The video call had come in that morning—fuzzy and half-hearted, a family tradition more dutiful than joyful. Faces on the screen smiled too wide, voices strained as they chorused Happy Birthday! and promised he was missed. A chocolate cake had been delivered to House Six’s common room shortly after, its surface smeared with clumsy icing and one broken candle mashed into the corner.It sat there now, untouched. Ugly. Like something that had already been eaten once.The frosting was melting down one side, and someone—specifically, Dr. Xavier Peterson—had been carving at it with a butter knife for the past twenty minutes. He sat cross-legged on the floor like a gremlin professor, licking frosting from his thumb and occasionally humming tunelessly. Crumbs freckled the front of his slacks. The man looked utterly at peace.No one mentioned that he wasn’t invited to the birthday celebration.No one cared.Fiero wasn’t even in the room. He was in the upstairs bathroom, standing beneath t

By the time third semester rolled in, Fiero, Miriam, Moses, and Joy were fifteen years old. Mika and Samuel were fourteen, but no one in their right mind treated them like underclassmen anymore. They were no longer prodigies, they were a threat. A rumor. A warning passed in hushed tones.They were House Six.And they knew it.Out beyond the academy walls, Luca Avancii received a curious birthday gift-a gift from his estranged son, Fiero.Luca Avancii stared at the box like it might bite. Inside, four photographs and a folded note.The first: the lower level of Demon Core, glowing with its unnatural hum, sulfurous mist curling in the corners.The second: Samuel grinning like a devil-child, blade in hand. Its hilt bore runes that shimmered in the light like they were watching him.Third: Mika. Smiling sweetly. Holding what looked like a charred asteroid fragment. The angle of the photo gave the illusion the rock had a heartbeat.Fourth: This was the most disturbing, a picture of Edwa

Adonis’s breathing grew uneven.Moses walked behind him, pressing down on his shoulders with heavy, unmoving hands.Samuel, meanwhile, knelt beside his foot, slowly unlacing his shoe.“You ever been stabbed through the sole, Adonis?” he asked softly. “Hurts more than you’d think. Because the pain shoots straight to your spine. Kinda poetic.”“No—no—please!”“Tell us why,” Joy snapped. “Why would you kill Julia? Why Jon?”Adonis was sweating. The air grew tighter around him.“I… I didn’t mean to kill her.”The room went still.Samuel’s head cocked.Fiero raised a brow.Adonis swallowed. “She found it. The proof. The transfers. My father’s name… the offshore account. She said she was going to tell Phantom. Said she owed it to them.”“You’re still lying,” Fiero said flatly. “Because you still are not making any sense.”Adonis froze.“She came to us,” Miriam added. “Bleeding, half dead. We watched the footage in Whitmore's office. You stabbed her, Adonis.”Adonis let out a small, helpless