Chapter 168: Secret door
VIVIANNE
The phone crackled in my hand, then fell into that heavy, unnatural silence that meant something had broken, not simply disconnected. I pressed it harder to my ear and called Shanelle’s name again, sharper and louder than I meant.
"Hello? Shanelle, hello—"
A sound slipped through—not a voice, but the restless hush of a room, the shuffle of movement, and then Shanelle’s breath catching, sharp and sudden, as if something had jolted her to the core.
"Alpha Theodore?"
I sat upright.
The name struck my chest with a weight that hinted at deeper meaning, and I flattened the phone to my ear, as if sheer force could pull the truth through the static.
"Shanelle." My voice came out low and urgent. "What is happening there? What is—"
A man’s voice sliced through, loud and so near it felt as if he stood right beside Shanelle.
"Where is Margaux?"
"I do not know." Shanelle’s voice was tight with something carefully controlled. "She told me to stay here. She looked—"
She did not finish the sentence.
Footsteps echoed, and the air shifted; I realized he had left the room.
"What is going on?" I said the moment the background settled.
"The Alpha came looking for Margaux." Shanelle’s voice had dropped to something quieter and faster. "He came in here, and she was not here, and he looked—"
"He sounded panicked," I said. "Why is he panicked? What has happened to my daughter? What did he do to my daughter?"
"He is not as terrible as everyone says, Luna Vivianne. Well... he has some redeeming qualities at least." There was a note of something in her voice that I filed away for later examination. "He is probably just concerned for her. Given the witch situation—"
"What witch situation?"
A pause followed.
"Well... someone was attacked," Shanelle said. "In the estate. It has been a whole morning here."
Chris’s voice came in from somewhere near Shanelle, louder than it needed to be. "Not just anyone. It is Alpha Theodore’s fiancée. Let them know that as well."
"What?" The word left me before the thought behind it had fully formed.
Shanelle had the same exact reaction.
"His fiancée," Chris confirmed. "She was attacked badly last night. And this morning, apparently, things have escalated considerably."
My blood chilled in that unmistakable way it did when scattered facts collided all at once, forming connections I had not asked for.
A witch in Valcourt meant there was magic involved, and that burned my fear anew. I wondered if this had anything to do with that demon my sister wrote about. The mention of my daughter’s new husband having a fiancée too was news that did not sit right with me one bit, and the fact that they were looking for her. Hell no!
"Shanelle," I said. "I am coming there."
"Luna Vivianne—"
I had already ended the call.
I moved to the dresser and yanked open a drawer, grabbing travel clothes as my mind raced ahead, plotting how to reach Valcourt without alerting anyone who might stand in my way before I found my daughter.
A knock came at the door.
I stopped.
"Who is it?"
"It is me..." Bastien’s voice came through. "Mother."
I slid the drawer shut before he could glimpse the half-packed evidence of my secret departure. For a moment, I stood in the center of my room, steadying my breath.
"Please," he said through the door. "I am not here to complain or to fight. I only want to talk."
I crossed to the door and opened it.
He seemed smaller than he had in years. His body still carried his father’s strength, unchanged, but the way he held himself now reminded me of the boy he was before this house taught him to grow bigger just to survive.
"What do you want?" I kept my voice even.
He stepped in, closed the door, and then shattered a part of me I hadn’t known was still breakable.
He got on his knees.
"I will marry the Texier girl," he said. "No resistance. No conditions. Whatever you need from me in terms of conduct, I will deliver it. She will be treated well. I will put in the work and make it mean something." He looked up at me from the floor. "I only ask one thing."
I did not speak.
"You have to let her go. I cannot lose another person I care about," he said. "Please."
A memory arrived without invitation.
The Archambault family burned in the rain. They had been herded together like condemned animals, bound, and set alight while the heavens opened above them. The downpour should have smothered the flames. Instead, the fire roared hotter, brighter, fed by enough accelerant to turn the rain into little more than hissing steam. The orange glow stained the night, unnatural and relentless, as if the fire had decided it would not be denied until every last Archambault had been reduced to ash.
I could still hear the crackle of the flames, the rain striking stone, the screams that seemed to go on far longer than they should have.
I remembered Margaux, standing in the courtyard as a child, with one hand pressed against her mouth, the free hand holding me tight as she watched it happen.
Bastien hadn’t been far from me. He was trying so hard to keep his face from splintering, to stand there as though he weren’t watching his world burn. But his best friend was among them.
Yann Archambault. Bastien’s first real friend, the kind of friendship children forge before they learn that loyalty has a cost. He had been bound beside his parents and siblings, condemned to die with them for the same charge of treason. No one had ever been honest about what that treason had been. The accusation survived. The truth did not. By dawn, there was nothing left of the Archambault family but scorched earth, drifting ash, and a warning to anyone who dared ask too many questions.
My hands had started shaking.
I forced myself to look at my son, kneeling on my bedroom floor, pleading for the smallest mercy in a mess I had helped make. The weight of every choice pressed down on me.
I crossed to him and knelt as well.
He was startled by the gesture. I saw it flicker across his face, the quick calculation as he tried to grasp what it meant.
"Get up," I said. "Both of us. Come."
We stood together.
"Once the wedding is completed," I said, "I will do everything within my power to ensure she is returned to you safely."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved across his face that I recognized as hope trying to decide whether it was safe to show itself.
"Can you promise me that?" he said.
I knew that I could not promise it. I knew the specifics of what Lucian had done and continued to do and the particular impossibility of making guarantees inside the architecture my brother had built around all of us. I knew that a promise made here was a promise made on ground that did not belong to me.
"Of course," I said. "Of course I can."
He exhaled, a long and unsteady release, and nodded.
I stood there and held the lie so carefully it almost felt like the truth. My face betrayed nothing.
All I could see was the Archambault family burning in the rain, bound together while the flames climbed over them. I saw Margaux, a child, standing frozen in the courtyard, her hands clamped over her mouth. I saw Bastien, not much older, watching his best friend disappear behind a wall of fire, denied even the mercy of knowing why Yann had been condemned. One night had stolen an entire family. The years afterward had simply taught the survivors how to carry the ashes.
And now another innocent life had been dragged into the machinery that had consumed theirs.
I understood, with a clarity that came far too late to matter, that I had no promise to give him. No authority. No certainty. Only a lie wrapped in hope, offered because the truth was crueler than silence. It was the smallest mercy I had left to offer, and even that felt pitiful against the ruin my family had spent years perfecting.
It would never be enough.
But I was going to tell that lie anyway.