Nyx
"Because I put him there."
She smiled—dreamy, distant, as though remembering something tender.
What does she mean by she put him there?
Put him where?
But I let her continue and she did.
"Thorne and I have been together since we were fifteen."
"That's a lie," I snapped.
"You think so?" she replied, calm as glass.
"We were together a year before you and him ever were."
The words landed heavier than I expected, each one a stone dropped into deep water, ripples spreading outward until they reached every memory I had clung to.
No one knew about Thorne and me.
It had been ours, secret, sacred, the only thing that belonged to me alone.
"He loved me," she continued, voice soft with remembered sweetness. "He was willing to do anything for me."
"Then why did he date me?" I demanded, voice cracking despite my effort to hold it steady. "Why did he ask me out himself?"
Tears came without permission, hot, traitorously fast, sliding down my cheeks no matter how fiercely I tried to blink them away. What hurt worse than the tears themselves was the way Lysera watched them fall, eyes bright, mouth curved in quiet triumph, as though my pain were a long-awaited gift.
"Because I hate you," she said softly, almost tenderly. "I hate you so much that I wished you dead."
"Why?" The word escaped as a broken whisper.
I had nothing.
Nothing that could inspire such venom.
No love. No favor. No future.
If anyone should have been drowning in resentment, it was me.
She had everything, our parents' adoration, their pride, their endless indulgence. Things I had never tasted and likely never would.
Yet somehow my mere existence offended her—as though sharing the same air, the same bloodline, the same roof, was an unpardonable crime.
"Because you're their real daughter," she said coldly. "No matter how much they hate you now, you're still their blood."
"Even though I am their blood," I answered, voice trembling despite every effort to steady it, "you have everything, Lysera. Their love, their attention, their approval, everything I was never given."
Her smile widened, slow, satisfied, almost proud.
"Yes," she said. "I have everything… everything except their blood. And that was the one thing I could never take from you."
She leaned closer, voice dropping to a venomous whisper that crawled inside my ears.
"So I placed Thorne in your life. I wanted to hurt you deeply enough that you would begin to wish for death, the same way I did every time I was reminded of what you were born with."
"I'm not weak enough to die over a man," I said, even as chaos tore through my chest.
"I don't believe a single word you've said about Thorne," I continued, lifting my chin despite the violent shaking in my heart. "He loves me. I know he does."
I clung to that conviction like a lifeline, the only thing still keeping me upright. No matter how sweetly poisonous her words were, I refused to let them take root. I chose to believe in the boy who had held me through nightmares, who had kissed my scars and told me they made me beautiful, who had sworn the mate bond was real and unbreakable.
"I will only believe what Thorne himself tells me," I said, voice steadier now, fueled by raw, stubborn refusal to bend. "Until I hear it from his own mouth, I won't let you rewrite my reality or destroy what we have."
I turned toward the stairs, fingers curling tight around the railing as I prepared to descend and search for him myself. My legs trembled, not from fear of the drop, but from the storm still raging behind my ribs.
Stubborn?
Yes.
Always.
I had never been the kind of person who swallowed lies simply because they were delivered with confidence. Rumors, accusations, half-truths twisted to wound, I rejected them all unless they came straight from the source, or from someone whose word I trusted beyond question.
And Lysera had never earned that trust.
Never would.
She leaned closer still, close enough that I could smell the jasmine in her perfume, close enough that her breath ghosted against my ear.
"If he loves you," she murmured, "why hasn't he touched you in two years, when he's done everything with me?"
My world tilted.
She wasn't supposed to know that.
No one was.
That particular truth, our restraint, our promises, the way we had chosen waiting over taking, had belonged only to us. I had never spoken of it. Not to family. Not to friends. Certainly not to her.
And I refused to believe Thorne would have betrayed that confidence.
So I stepped toward the stairs.
"That's it…" Lysera's voice followed, low and deliberate.
She pressed closer, her breath warm against the back of my neck, sending ice straight down my spine.
"Imagine you fall from here," she whispered, almost gently. "What do you think everyone will say?"
She didn't wait for me to answer.
"They'll say you couldn't handle it," she continued, cruelty curling through every syllable. "They'll say Thorne rejected you, that you were so desperate and broken you threw yourself down the stairs."
Her lips curved, I could hear the smile in her voice even without seeing it. "And then you'll be gone from all our lives, for good."
I knew, in that frozen instant, that she meant it.
This was not idle cruelty.
This was calculation.
I felt her palm flatten against the center of my back firm, deliberate, pushing.
Instinct took over.
I twisted sideways at the final second violent, desperate, enough to throw her balance instead of mine. Her hand met empty air.
Lysera gasped, sharp, startled.
Then she fell.
Her body tumbled, step after step after step, gown flaring like dark wings, jewels flashing wildly in the chandelier light. The sound was obscene: silk tearing, bone striking marble, a sickening series of thuds that echoed through the entire hall.
I stood frozen at the top of the stairs, unable to move, unable to breathe, watching the nightmare unfold as though it belonged to someone else.
I didn't scream.
I didn't panic.
I didn't even blink.
Not until she landed... hard, graceless, sprawled at the bottom.
Right in front of Thorne.
That was when terror finally crashed through me like cold water.
My hands began to shake violently.
My breath came in ragged, broken gasps.
One thought consumed every corner of my mind, louder than the sudden silence that had swallowed the hall.
What have I done?