Morning spilled through the stained-glass windows of the Devonshire Estate's east wing dining hall, casting fragments of ruby, sapphire, and emerald across the polished mahogany floors.
The long table—thirteen feet of dark, lacquered wood gleaming beneath a chandelier of black crystal—could have seated a minor parliament. Instead, only four places were set, as delicate and ceremonial as a ritual. It was a room built for declarations and feasts, not the quiet, hesitant breaking of fast.
Vivica sat at the far end, stiff and silent.
Her pale hands were folded in her lap, untouched cutlery gleaming beside a plate of neatly sliced fruit. The high-backed chair she occupied was carved with the Devonshire wolf, its snarling face looming behind her like a guardian carved in oak. She looked impossibly small beneath it, a figurine lost in a fortress.
It was her first time having breakfast like this—so much for a simple meal—but she didn't say a word. Didn't react. She rarely did.
At the head of the table, Damon Devonshire sat like a statue that had just begun to remember how to move. He hadn't stopped glancing at his long lost-daughter since she entered the dining hall, each look less like a command and more like a question he didn't know how to phrase.
"Would you like more toast?" he asked, voice deeper than it needed to be. He leaned forward—awkwardly, uncertainly—and nudged the silver platter a few inches toward her. It clinked gently, like an offering.
Vivica blinked once. Expressionless.
She did not reach for the toast.
A muscle in Damon's jaw twitched. He cleared his throat. "Or perhaps the jam…? It's apricot. Your… your mother liked apricot."
Still, the toast sat untouched. So did the jam.
At the middle of the table, Belle—barely six years old and radiating the kind of chaotic energy reserved for fox cubs and fairy mischief—perched with one leg tucked under her. Her curls, the color of wild buttercups, bounced with every exaggerated movement. She held her spoon above her soft-boiled egg like it was a tiny knight's lance.
"She's not a bunny, Father," Belle declared with a giggle. "She's not going to wiggle her nose just because you gave her something orange."
"Belle," Diana said sharply, her tone smooth as poured velvet—but undercut with steel. Her fingers clutched her teacup too tightly, knuckles white against porcelain. "Eat your breakfast."
Belle blinked innocently and turned to Vivica, completely undeterred. "Do you even like apricots? Or toast? Or… anything?"
Vivica's gaze remained fixed on her plate. Not in defiance. Not in shyness. Just stillness. She regarded the soft heap of eggs and berries like it might rearrange itself into something familiar if she stared hard enough.
Damon tried again, his voice softer now. "Did you sleep well? I hoped the room is to your liking."
Another blink. Another wall of silence.
Belle leaned closer to Diana with theatrical whispering fingers. "She doesn't talk. Maybe she's cursed."
Vivica looked up, then.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Her eyes—like a green forest amidst winter—locked with Belle's.
"I'm not cursed," she said, voice quiet but sharp enough to slice the air.
Then, just as calmly, she picked up her fork and resumed cutting her eggs into even, perfect bites.
Damon stiffened. "Belle, mind your manners, sweetheart." The words were gentle. The reprimand was not. "She is your older sister. Do not speak like that again."
Belle flinched. Her spoon clinked against the side of her cup. "Y-yes, Father. I'm sorry."
Diana didn't flinch. But her smile tightened.
A silence stretched between them, taut and uncomfortable.
Then, Diana smiled, but it was brittle. "Belle, darling, why don't you run to the solarium after breakfast. I believe the puppies are waiting."
Belle huffed. "I'm not done—"
"Now."
With a dramatic sigh and one final spoonful of jam, Belle hopped from her chair and skipped out the door. The moment she vanished, Diana set her teacup down with a little too much precision, delicately. "She's just curious, Damon. There was no need to raise your voice." She murmured, her words floating into the heavy air like perfume with poison beneath. "It isn't every day a noble heir walks into a house already full."
Vivica didn't react. Damon did. His eyes flicked toward Diana, cold and unreadable, like a frost rolling beneath a spring thaw.
"Belle is a child," he said. "But I will not tolerate that behavior again. Nor your words. Vivica is my daughter."
There it was again—the iron thread in his voice, the storm behind the stillness.
Diana's smile didn't falter. But it sharpened. "So is Belle."
Vivica took no notice of the storm gathering in the room. She simply chewed. Calmly. Neatly. Like a doll carved from ice and manners, impervious to the silent battle unfolding around her.
Damon tried once more, clearing his throat. "If you'd like to visit the greenhouse later, or the playroom, I can arrange—"
"I'd like to see the library," Vivica interrupted, her voice soft and solemn.
Everyone looked at her, and Damon blinked. "The library?"
Vivica nodded. "Mother liked books."
He looked at her then—not just with his eyes, but with something old and bruised behind them. Grief, perhaps. Or memory.
"Then I'll take you," he said quietly.
Across the table, Diana's fingernail tapped once—sharp and deliberate—against the porcelain rim of her cup.
Vivica stood and gave the smallest curtsey, as precise as any court-trained lady—she used to play princess with Vivian… and Vivian's grandmother was, in fact, a real princess from a faraway land.
"Thank you, Your Grace."
Then she turned and walked from the room without once looking back.
Damon watched the empty doorway long after she was gone, as if something in him had followed her out and hadn't returned.
Diana said nothing.
But her teacup cracked faintly in her hand.
**
The Devonshire library was a cathedral of silence—vaulted ceilings arched above them like the ribs of a sleeping beast, and walls upon walls of books loomed like ancient sentinels. The hearth crackled, diffusing a faint amber glow across worn armchairs and tapestries that smelled of cedar and old ink.
Vivica stood at the edge of a Persian rug, gaze scanning the shelves. She moved with the quiet grace of someone used to moving through places unnoticed—light on her feet, as though she feared disturbing the dust.
Damon followed behind, unsure if he was escorting a guest or trespassing into her solitude.
"This library belonged to your great-grandfather… my grandfather," he said after a pause. "He built it to rival the royal archives. He believed a strong mind made a stronger duke."
Vivica's small fingers brushed the spines of the books, pausing at one Healing Herbs and Their Arcane Properties.
She pulled it down with both hands and flipped it open with care.
"You can read that?" Damon asked, half-curious, half-startled.
"I learned at the orphanage," she said plainly, not looking up. "The nuns taught letters, arithmetic, maths, prayers..."
"For young children?"
"The temple believed of early education," she paused for a second, "it shouldn't be exclusive for the nobles."
"O-Of course." A faint frown touched Damon's brow. "I see…"
She turned a page. "I liked the quiet hours best. Books didn't talk unless you asked them to."
He stepped forward, slow, careful. "I'll arrange your tutors soon. And lessons for the succession. You'll have everything you need to take your place."
Vivica's hands stilled, and she gave a soft nod. "Understood."
Damon hesitated. "Vivica—"
"I'd rather you didn't try," she stated, her voice barely more than a whisper, but it cut clean and sharp. "To be close. Not yet."
There was no venom in it. Just truth, small and heavy as a stone in the pocket.
Damon stood silent for a long moment. Then nodded once. "Very well."
She finally glanced up at him, studying his face as though she were comparing it to a portrait she'd only seen in whispers and shadows. His jaw was square, carved in noble lines. His dark hair was impeccably combed, the silver at his temples only enhancing the striking symmetry of his features.
But it was his eyes that caught her—the same sharp emerald as hers. Piercing. Reflective.
She looked away again. Her mother's nose, her father's eyes. A war painted on a child's face.
**
The fire in Damon's chamber clawed up the hearth like a beast in its cage, throwing jagged light across marble floors and velvet shadows.
The air inside the room buzzed—not with heat, but with the fury of two people who knew where to wound and never missed.
Diana stood before the mirror, her figure wrapped in pale silk that clung to her like a second skin. Her hair was pinned high, her reflection's icy. But her eyes—those hazel eyes—burned like coals raked raw.
"You humiliated me," she hissed, turning sharply. "At my own table, before the staff. You made a spectacle of us."
Damon's gaze didn't flinch. He stood at the center of the room, his jaw clenched like a steel trap. "I protected a child. My child. And she was mocked like she was some court jester. I won't allow that again. Belle is but a young child, but she crossed the line. As her mother you're hold accountable. And so am I as her father."
"Vivica is not just a child!" Diana's voice rang out, sharp and furious, echoing off the stone walls like a blade unsheathed. "She's a scar, Damon—a living monument to everything I will never be. She bears the name, the blood, the birthright of the woman you married. The woman you once choose over me just because I am not of nobility!"
She stepped closer, eyes blazing. "Don't you dare look at me like I'm cruel. You and I both know—she was the true Duchess. Legal. Regal. And I... I was always second, wasn't I? Always the shadow behind her crown!"
Damon stepped forward. His voice dropped, low and dangerous.
"And yet I chose you, didn't I?"
The silence that followed was razor-sharp. The air between them pulsed with unsaid things, too heated to breathe.
He didn't blink. Didn't waver.
"Vivica is my blood," he declared, each word deliberate, anchored by fury barely restrained. "She is my heir. My legal heir. Of House Devonshire. Of House Von Thesse. That is not a discussion. Not a plea. Not a negotiation."
He leaned closer, eyes like twin blades of emerald flame.
"And no one—no one—will treat her as anything less. Not in this house. Not in my sight."
Diana's breath caught, her spine stiffening like a drawn bowstring. "So that's it? I'm to smile and bow before her? Watch my daughter—the girl I birthed, raised, bled for—get brushed aside like a forgotten trinket?"
"No one is being brushed aside, Diana!" Damon growled, voice sharp as shattered glass. "Belle is mine and always will be. But Vivica will be treated with dignity. With respect."
The words cracked between them like a whip.
"And if I don't comply?" she asked, a tremble of fury threading through her poised tone. "Will you cast me out? Trade me for some dusty wraith from the past? What next, Damon? Shall I share my bed with your regret, too?"
He stalked closer, now chest to chest with her, and the flickering fire caught the line of his jaw—tense, uncompromising. "You're smarter than this, Diana. Don't make this house bleed from the inside."
She let out a bitter laugh, her lips curling. "You only get like this when you're scared. When you don't know how to fix the mess you made."
"I'm not scared," he said, low, rough.
"You are," she whispered, lifting her face until their breath mingled. "You're not a duke right now. You're just a man who's burning."
Their mouths collided.
It wasn't affection—it was war.
Desperate, clawing, laced with venom and the taste of everything left unsaid. His hands gripped her like she might vanish if he let go. Her nails bit through his shirt, pulling him down into the storm she refused to name.
They crashed back onto the bed, silk and muscle tangled in the ruins of a fight that neither of them could win.
The fire roared like applause, the shadows dancing around their forms as silk slid to the floor and restraint shattered like glass.
He kissed her like he was chasing silence.
She kissed him like power was a currency she refused to lose.
And when the storm finally broke—when breath slowed and the sweat cooled and the fire dimmed—Diana rested her cheek against his bare chest. The weight of the fight still lingered in the room like perfume and ash.
"She's not mine," she murmured, the words barely a ripple in the silence.
Damon stared up at the ceiling, jaw still set, one hand resting over his eyes.
"I'm not asking you to pretend," he said at last, voice rough as gravel. "I'm not asking anything at all."
Silence, then—
"But…?"
"But I made myself very clear. She is my heir. My firstborn. My daughter. Mine." He pressed a kiss to her forehead before rising. "Do not cross the line."
Diana didn't answer. Her eyes drifted shut, lashes wet with something unshed. Outside the window, wind clawed at the glass. And above them, the shadows played across the ceiling—long and restless, like ghosts with unfinished names.