The present dissolved into silence, but Alexander's mind was anything but still. As he held Victoria, her breath trembling against his skin, the past clawed its way back-sharp, merciless, alive.
Isolde.
Her name was a wound that had never healed, a scar he carried in his blood. He closed his eyes, and the chamber around him melted into memory...
The first time he touched Isolde, it was not love-it was hunger.
She had arrived at the estate like a tempest, uninvited yet irresistible, a flame that promised warmth even as it threatened to consume.
She was fire in the dark: laughter too loud, lips too daring, eyes that dared him to sin. Alexander, who had built his life on restraint and control, found himself undone by her recklessness.
That night, in the garden where the moonlight burned silver on their skin, she kissed him with wild abandon, and he let her. His hands had tangled in her dark hair, his mouth had claimed hers, and every kiss tasted of risk.
But fire does not simply warm-it devours.
The passion that bound them soon turned to chains. Isolde demanded more-more power, more secrets, more of him than he could give. And when he resisted, she marked him. The scar on her collarbone was not her only wound; his heart bore its twin.
"Do you regret me?" she had whispered once, her nails digging into his back as though pain could bind them.
"I regret nothing," he had lied. But the truth was already consuming him.
And then came Cassandra.
Not fiery, not reckless-no, Cassandra was stone. Steady, unyielding, her gaze sharp with truths she never softened. She had been the keeper of the house, the one who watched from the shadows with ledger in hand, recording debts no one else dared speak aloud.
But even stone can fracture.
One night, when Isolde's fury had driven Alexander to the brink, he had found Cassandra waiting in the servants' wing, her eyes unreadable.
"You will destroy yourself," she had said.
He had laughed bitterly. "Perhaps I deserve to."
Cassandra had not touched him then-not yet-but her presence was anchor enough. With her, desire was not wildfire; it was gravity. Unspoken, restrained, but no less powerful. And that restraint, that stillness, had frightened him more than Isolde's fire ever could.
For Cassandra had known him-truly known him. Not just the man of shadows, but the boy who had grown within them. She had seen his weakness, his hunger, his shame... and she had not turned away.
That, more than passion, was dangerous.
Alexander opened his eyes, dragging himself back to the present.
Victoria was staring at him, confusion and fear warring in her gaze. She could feel it-the weight of ghosts pressing between them.
"Alexander?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Who was she to you?"
His jaw tightened. Shadows flickered across his face. "Isolde was a flame I should never have touched."
"And Cassandra?"
At her name, his silence was sharper than any answer. His eyes shifted, dark and unyielding, a storm that refused to break.
Cassandra, standing at the far end of the chamber, did not move. But the way her hand rested on the ledger, the way her eyes flickered just briefly toward him, told Victoria all she needed to know.
There were debts written there too-debts of desire, of betrayal, of love unspoken.
And they were not finished.