Chapter 5 - Chapter 4: Secrets Beneath the Mask

After the feast, Lucien led her to his private gallery walls lined with ancestral portraits, each bride wearing that same thorned rose chain. "Every DeCarlo bride before you has vanished," he said, voice low. "You will not." She turned, defiance in her eyes. "Why am I different?" He paused before a sorrowful statue. "Some powers cannot be contained. And you... you might break us both."