Secrets had always been heavy, but this one threatened to crush her.
She should have run when Damien found her in the garden, trembling with the weight of the birth certificate hidden beneath her skin like a second pulse.
Instead, Elara let the darkness take her, let his hand catch hers, let herself lean into the man who had somehow become the only thing keeping her upright.She hated him.
She wanted him.
She feared him most of all."Something is wrong," Damien murmured, his voice low, steady, unrelenting. He had cornered her between the cold marble wall and his body, his shadow blotting out the flickering light of the corridor's candelabras. "What did you see?"Elara's lips parted, then closed. Lies tangled on her tongue. "Nothing."His gaze cut sharper than a blade. "Don't insult me. You're trembling. Your mask slipped tonight." His hand brushed against hers, too soft for what he was, but firm enough to pin her in place. "Tell me, Elara. What are you hiding from me?"Her chest heaved. She tried to keep her voice level, but the quake broke through. "I can't. You wouldn't…""Wouldn't what?" His voice rose, not in anger, but in demand. "Wouldn't understand? Or wouldn't forgive?"The silence stretched, choking her. She wanted to confess. She wanted to scream. She wanted to tear the truth out and throw it at him so it would no longer burn her alive.Instead, she whispered, "Your family… your archives… they aren't what you think."Damien stilled. She saw it then…the flicker of fear behind his eyes, the same gnawing suspicion that had been eating him alive too."My father hides things," he admitted slowly. "Even from me. I've seen glimpses, records redacted, names erased, bloodlines rewritten. I thought it was politics. Power." His voice dropped, raw. "But you've found something more, haven't you?"Elara's throat locked. Tears threatened, but she forced them back, her defiance sparking even now. "You don't want the truth, Damien. Once you know it, you can't unknow it."His hand gripped her wrist, his body taut with something violent and desperate. "Then make me know it," he growled, and before she could breathe, his mouth was on hers.It wasn't a kiss born of tenderness, but of ruin. A collision of two souls clawing for air inside a drowning house of lies. She tasted fury. She tasted despair. She tasted the man who should have been her salvation and knew he could only ever be her destruction.Her fingers twisted in his shirt, pulling him closer even as her mind screamed to push him away. Every shiver, every gasp, every press of lips deepened the cliff they were both falling from.When they broke apart, his forehead pressed to hers, his voice was ragged. "Why does this feel like I've waited my whole life for you?"The words tore her apart. She couldn't breathe.Because she knew.
She had already seen the proof."Damien…" Her voice cracked. The truth spilled before she could cage it. "You don't understand. I am your whole life. I always was."He drew back, confusion slicing across his face. "What are you talking about?"Elara shook her head violently, but the storm had already broken. "The archives, the orphanage records, your father's ledgers. I saw my name, my mother's." Her chest shuddered, each word ripping her apart. "Damien… I'm not just some orphan girl... I'm your sister."The silence that followed was monstrous.Damien staggered a step back, as if the marble floor had given way beneath him. His face drained of color, then darkened, then twisted with something she had never seen before, horror, denial, fury, longing, grief, all collapsing into one."No," he said flatly. His voice was a blade now, severing the air. "No, that's impossible. That's…"Elara lifted trembling hands. "It's the truth. You wanted to know. Now you do."
His hands dragged through his hair as his chest rose and fell like a storm tide. He looked at her as if she were both the answer to every ache he had ever carried and the curse that would end him."Elara…" His voice broke, sharp, haunted. "Do you know what we've done? What does this mean?"Tears spilled hot down her cheeks, and still she lifted her chin with defiance. "It means we've both been living in someone else's lies. It means your father forged us into enemies when we were family. It means nothing we've felt.." her voice cracked "nothing we've done was ever safe."He lurched forward, gripping her arms, shaking his head like a man possessed. "Don't say that. Don't make it real."But it was real. Every pulse of blood in their veins screamed it.For the first time, Damien Varezzi , the predator, the prince of shadows looked broken. "If this is true," he whispered, "then we are damned."He released her as if her touch burned him and stepped back into the dark, his face unreadable, his body rigid with torment."Stay away from the archives," he said finally, voice cold and hollow. "Stay away from me."Then he turned, his figure swallowed by the estate's endless corridors, leaving Elara shaking in the dark, knowing nothing would ever be the same.The truth had finally been spoken aloud.
And it had already begun to destroy them.