Chapter 7: Midnight Orders
The hours dragged.
No candles were lit in her chamber. The fire had been reduced to dying embers. The silence was not true silence—but rather a hollow kind, filled with muffled rustling, the shifting groan of old wood, and the occasional whisper curling beneath the door like smoke.
Elira lay atop the thin mattress, arms folded beneath her head, staring up at the ceiling's intricate carvings. She was not afraid. Not exactly.
But she was angry.
And cold.
And she was beginning to realize that Lord Lucien Thorne Vaelric did not bluff.
He had sealed her in. Not cruelly, not violently, but with a precision so cold it frightened her more than shouting ever could. Her belongings had vanished. Her room had been hollowed out into something sterile and monastic.
A single wool blanket. A single set of nightclothes. No mirrors. No books. No timepiece. Just the collar around her neck humming faintly with its watchful power.
Discipline, he had called it.
Yet beneath the fury she felt something worse: a sliver of guilt.
She had defied him. Not out of malice, but need. The book had called to her. The name inked into that family tree—it wasn't some forgery. It wasn't a mistake. She had been right to find it.
Still… something else had shifted when she entered that room. As though an old ward had cracked open. Something far older than Thorne's rules.
A soft knock at the door jolted her upright.
Three precise taps.
Then silence.
She hesitated.
Another knock—this time slower. More deliberate.
"Enter," she said, her voice strained.
The door creaked open on its own.
No servant stood there. Only Lucien.
But not in his usual finery.
Tonight, he wore black gloves, a loose shirt of embroidered silver thread, and a high velvet coat the color of ravens' wings. His white hair was tied back, revealing a pale throat marked with a small sigil near the collarbone—a sigil that shimmered as he stepped into the lamplight.
"Get up," he said coolly.
She did not move. "Why?"
"You asked questions. Tonight, you will begin to earn the right to answers."
Elira narrowed her eyes. "More games?"
"No. Orders." His voice dropped. "And you will obey them."
The collar tightened, just enough to remind her who was in control.
She swung her legs off the bed and stood. "Where are we going?"
"To a part of the house you haven't seen," he said, stepping aside.
She followed. Barefoot, without a cloak, her feet were near silent against the cold flagstone.
Down the east wing. Past mirrors covered in velvet sheets. Past rooms that pulsed with warmth behind closed doors. The air grew colder, the silence deeper.
"Is this another punishment?" she asked.
Lucien said nothing.
Only when they descended a second stairwell—a narrow, spiraling corridor lit by candle sconces—did he finally speak.
"There are things within this manor that predate your birth by centuries. This house is old. Wounded. Cursed, some would say. But it obeys its master."
"And that's you," she said.
Lucien looked at her. "Yes."
They stopped before a blackened wooden door carved with thorns. He reached into his coat and withdrew a small silver key. When he inserted it into the lock, a soft click echoed down the passage—followed by the sound of something unlatching from the inside.
The door creaked open.
Beyond it: a circular room, lined in obsidian shelves and pale scrollwork. At the center stood a low table marked with runes that shimmered faintly, though no flame lit them.
"Come," he said.
Elira stepped inside, eyes adjusting to the faint silver light radiating from the walls. A book hovered just above the table's surface—open and waiting. This one was not old. It pulsed like something alive.
"What is this place?"
"My private study."
She turned toward him, frowning. "Then why bring me here?"
Lucien walked past her and motioned to the floating tome. "Because you asked about your name."
Her heart skipped.
"That book," he said, "contains blood records. Memories. Contracts. Histories that cannot be forged. It was crafted by a seer-knight who once served the Elder Court. It recognizes bloodlines. It cannot lie."
Elira took a slow step toward it.
"And you expect me to just… read it?"
"No. I expect you to listen." He circled behind her.
The collar pulsed, and suddenly the room darkened.
The book glowed brighter—then spoke.
Not aloud. Not in words. But in visions.
She saw an image: her mother, barely older than Elira was now, fleeing through a snowy wood with a child in her arms.
Then another flash—her father's voice shouting something in a language she didn't know. The smell of burning parchment.
A name whispered:
"Vaelric."
She gasped.
Then the vision shifted—and she saw her own face, not as it was now, but older. Hardened. Dressed in court garb. Surrounded by noblemen with crimson eyes.
Elira staggered back.
Lucien caught her by the elbow, steadying her. His touch was firm, not gentle.
"You are not what you were told," he said.
"What was that?" she breathed. "Was that real?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he turned toward the book and dismissed it with a gesture. The room dimmed, settling back into cold candlelight.
"You were marked at birth," he said. "Part of a pact your parents made long before they vanished. That mark carried power—royal blood, dormant and hidden. Until now."
Her voice trembled. "Why me?"
"Because you survived," he said. "And because the collar recognized you."
She touched the metal ring around her neck. "You said it was a leash."
"It was." His eyes locked on hers. "But now it's also a tether—to your inheritance. And to me."
A beat passed.
Then he stepped forward.
"I could break you," he said softly. "I could snap your will and turn you into a shadow of yourself. But I won't."
Elira's chest rose and fell.
"Why?" she whispered.
Lucien leaned in. "Because you're not a pet anymore, Elira."
He turned and strode toward the door.
"Rest. Tomorrow, we begin again."
As the door closed, she stood alone in the flickering dark—collar throbbing softly, her heartbeat pounding.
Not a pet.
But not yet free.
And for the first time, she feared what earning answers might truly cost her.
The collar's pulse had faded by morning, but its phantom weight remained on Elira's neck like an echo of shame and defiance.
Sleep had come in scattered pieces—images of fire, of her brother calling to her through a wall of thorns, and of Lord Lucien Thorne's eyes, glacier-cold and unreadable, watching her unravel in the library.
Her limbs ached as she dressed.
She had expected punishment—something crueler than words or a cold withdrawal. But instead, silence greeted her at her door. Not the kind that meant forgiveness, but the kind that watched.
The staff avoided her again. No one knocked. No one brought her tea or pastries.
Her freedoms—what little she'd been granted—had been stripped.
No garden strolls. No evening fire in the reading room. The guards at each corner of the manor's grand hall seemed to watch her now not as a guest, or even a prisoner, but as something else entirely.
By midday, she was summoned.
Not harshly. Not even coldly. Just a folded note slipped beneath her door in perfect black ink:
You will come to the Drawing Room before sundown. Wear the garnet velvet.
L.T.
She held the letter in her trembling hand for minutes. The garnet velvet.
Not a pet.
The words had burned into her like a brand. Not a pet—but still collared. Still watched. Still shackled by a bond that pulsed when she dared step too far.
And yet... he hadn't broken her.
He could have.
Why didn't he?