Chapter Six
Ava didn't scream when she saw me in the forbidden room.
That would've been easier to handle—easier to respond to, easier to brush off. But she didn't scream. She just stepped inside, slow and deliberate, her expression unreadable beneath her cold green eyes.
The door clicked shut behind her, and suddenly I was trapped—not just in a physical space, but in the silence that followed. Thick, suffocating, pressing against my skin like a second layer of clothing.
"You shouldn't be in here," she said softly, her voice brushing over the dust and secrets in the air.
"I didn't know it was yours," I answered, trying to hold her stare. But it wasn't hers I was looking at anymore. It was hers. Elara's.
The woman in the portrait looked ethereal. Delicate. Posed in soft white lace that fell from her shoulders like snowflakes, her hand barely touching the embroidered veil at her side. But it wasn't the bridal gown that made my chest tighten—it was the look in her eyes. Haunted, almost frightened. As if she knew something dark lingered just outside the frame.
"Why is she painted like that?" I asked, stepping away from the canvas as if it might burn me.
"She was going to be married," Ava said, walking forward with a grace that felt sharpened to a blade. "To Damien."
My mouth went dry. "He proposed to her?"
Ava didn't answer immediately. She stopped just in front of the portrait, eyes flicking over Elara's painted face. There was a flicker of something fragile behind her usual mask of elegance. Regret. Bitterness. Maybe both.
"Yes," she finally said. "He asked her the night before she disappeared."
Disappeared.
The word echoed in my chest. Not died. Not left.
Disappeared.
My arms folded across my stomach, instinctively protective. "What happened to her?"
Ava's lips twitched into something resembling a smile, but it didn't touch her eyes.
"If we knew that, there wouldn't be a portrait hidden away, would there?"
The conversation might've ended there. But something about Ava—about this room and this house and all the hidden pieces of the past—pushed me forward when I should've walked away.
"You painted her," I said. I pointed to the initials in the bottom right of the canvas: A.D. Ava Delacroix.
Her jaw clenched. "She asked me to. It was a gift."
"She asked you?"
"We weren't friends, Selene. Don't get any delusions. But I was the only one she trusted with this." Her gaze lingered on Elara's face with something I couldn't quite name. "We were rivals. And sisters. And… nothing."
I frowned. "Why would she trust you?"
Ava's voice dropped lower. "Because I loved Damien. And she knew it."
The air in the room cracked with invisible pressure.
"You hated her," I whispered.
Ava turned to me then. Turned. And her face was bare. No mask. No smirk. Just a bitter kind of honesty.
"Yes," she said. "Because he looked at her like the sun rose for her alone. Because she had his heart, and I—" she laughed, but it sounded like a sob—"I only had his attention."
I didn't know what to say.
And I think that's what Ava wanted. For once, she wasn't trying to make me uncomfortable. She was just… unraveling in front of me.
She walked over to the painting and touched the edge of the canvas.
"I painted this the day after she vanished. I stayed up all night because I thought… if she came back, he would give it to her."
She looked over her shoulder at me.
"But she never did."
I left the room in silence, Elara's painted eyes following me like a whisper I couldn't shake. That night, I didn't sleep.
The clock in Damien's room ticked so loudly it felt like a countdown. To what, I didn't know. My heartbeat matched its rhythm, too fast, too loud. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the veil. The shadows behind Elara's smile. Ava's face when she said she hated her.
Everything about this house was haunted. Not by ghosts, but by what no one dared say aloud.
Around three a.m., I heard footsteps in the hallway.
Soft. Hesitant.
I sat up in bed, heart racing.
The steps paused just outside my door.
I waited.
Then they turned and began to fade.
No.
I got up. Slipped into one of Damien's shirts—white, oversized, still warm from his skin—and followed the sound.
He was in the music room again.
It wasn't a room. It was a glass garden attached to the east wing of the mansion—high vaulted ceilings, towering windows covered in ivy, and instruments scattered like forgotten memories.
Damien stood at the piano, shirtless, his back tense beneath the moonlight.
He didn't play.
He just stood there, staring at the keys like they had answers he couldn't bear to ask.
"You're awake," I said quietly from the doorway.
He didn't move. "So are you."
I stepped inside, drawn to the pain radiating off him. The bourbon glass beside the piano was untouched. That said more than words.
"You come here a lot," I said.
"It's the only place in this house that doesn't lie to me."
He finally looked at me then.
His eyes were darker than I'd ever seen them—storm-colored, like the sky before it broke open.
"She was pregnant."
The words hit me like a car crash. Sudden. Violent.
"Elara?" I whispered.
He nodded once, jaw tight. "She told me the night I proposed. We were happy, for exactly twelve hours. Then we argued. I said things I shouldn't have. She left that night."
"And didn't come back."
His silence was confirmation.
I wanted to ask so many questions. About what he'd said. About what had happened. But instead, I walked toward the piano.
"I don't think you hated her," I said.
His eyes met mine, sharp.
"I think you hated that she made you feel. And you've been punishing yourself ever since."
He looked like he was about to deny it. Then something cracked in his expression.
He moved, slow, and took my hand. Gently guided me to the bench beside him.
We sat.
He played a single note. Then another. Then a melody I didn't know, soft and aching. Like grief in music.
Then he placed my hand over the keys.
"Play something," he whispered.
"I don't know how."
"Then fake it. That's what we all do."
So I pressed a key. And he followed. Soon, we were making something imperfect and strange and beautiful together. A song that didn't exist. A moment that wasn't supposed to be real.
Afterward, we didn't go back to bed.
We stayed in the garden until dawn.
He told me about Elara. How they met. How she made him laugh even when he didn't want to. How she never tried to fix him—but made him want to fix himself.
"She was light," he said. "And I was always going to snuff her out."
I reached for his hand. He let me.
Morning came with consequences.
I woke tangled in the sheets, alone. But not for long.
A knock at the door. Firm. Cold.
I sat up as Vincent Vale entered, his dark suit immaculate despite the early hour.
He looked at me. Then at Damien, who stood by the window, silent and still.
"There's something you both need to see."
My stomach turned.
Vincent's voice was quiet but heavy. "They found something near the cliffs."
Damien turned sharply. "What?"
Vincent hesitated.
"A ring," he said. "Buried in the roots of an old tree. Worn. Weathered. With the initials E.V."
My blood went cold.
Damien didn't speak. Just stared at Vincent like he'd been shot.
Then, slowly, he turned to me.
His face was pale. But his eyes…
His eyes were terrified.
"It wasn't supposed to surface," he said softly.
And in that moment, I realized something I hadn't before.
Damien Vale wasn't afraid of losing power.
He was afraid the truth would destroy him.
Cliffhanger:
The discovery of the ring triggers an anonymous tip to the police, prompting them to re-open Elara's case. But when Selene sneaks into Damien's study that night, she finds a box hidden behind the fireplace brick — a box filled with love letters Elara never sent, and one addressed to "the one I could never trust."