Chapter 184: Purple
MARGAUX
He searched my face with the certainty of someone who already knew exactly what he would find written there.
"Yes," he said. "I know."
The confirmation slipped in quietly, undramatic, yet it shifted the entire atmosphere of the room.
He looked at me for a long moment and then said, "Is that why you defended him? Because of history? Because of who he was before?"
That was when it all came rushing back, not in fragments but in a single, sudden flood, the way memories sometimes burst open when the right key turns. This morning. How erratic he had been. I had blamed it all on magic. But he had been sane.
Heat rose to my cheeks before I could stop it.
I turned to Laurent and Shanelle.
"Can I have the room?" I said.
They glanced at me, then exchanged a swift, silent conversation with their eyes.
"Margaux—" Laurent began.
"Please," I said. "I genuinely need a moment alone with him."
"He is still—"
"He would never hurt me." I held his gaze steadily. "And even if he somehow wanted to, he is cuffed. You can stand directly outside the door."
Laurent let the pause stretch, making sure I noticed his hesitation, then nodded once and headed for the door. Shanelle followed, giving me a look that promised she would demand every detail as soon as she could.
The door closed.
I locked it.
I turned back to Chris and really looked at him—the man I had known for years—and let the silence settle between us before I spoke.
"So this morning," I began, my voice quiet, searching his face for any flicker of denial, "you acted of your own volition. Your words, your choices—none of them compelled, except the singular moment the spell silenced you, the instant you tried to speak of Étienne." I let the name settle between us like a stone disturbing the surface of a pond.
He nodded, the admission simple, yet it seemed to reverberate through the small, enclosed space, echoing in the shadows.
"And what you confessed about your feelings?"
His gaze held mine, unwavering, stripped of pretense. "Every word was honest."
For the briefest instant, I caught sight of a thin purple thread winding around his wrists and connecting to mine. It painfully reminded me so much of the similar one I had seen with Étienne and Séverine.
I immediately looked away from it.
For a moment, I allowed myself to absorb the gravity of that truth. My breath came slow, each inhale deliberate, as if I could steady the ache that pressed against my ribs.
"Chris, I am sorry," I said, the apology feeling insufficient, almost brittle in the charged quiet. "There is no world where you and I become something more. I need you to hear it, to understand I am not hedging or protecting you from the truth."
He drew in a sharp breath. "Because of him?"
"Yes."
Something shuttered in his expression, a resignation flickering behind the stubborn set of his jaw. "You love him?" His tone carried the weight of inevitability. "Margaux, think of what he has done. He attacked our pack, forced you into a marriage alliance that you did not want, dragged your family’s name through public ruin. The file he demanded—whatever plot he has orchestrated, it is not minor, and you stand at the center, trusting he is the same person you once knew."
"He has changed in some ways," I replied, my voice steadier than I felt. "But it is not time or distance that transformed him. It was what my family and our pack inflicted. We shaped him into what he became." I felt the truth burn in my throat, but I forced myself to continue. "You know only fragments of that night’s aftermath. I wish you could see the rest. He does not threaten me. Perhaps he arrived with vengeance in his heart, but whatever he once intended, he was justified in wanting it. We broke his family. But that is not what he seeks now."
"You are naive."
"No, Chris. I am only telling you what is real."
He regarded me, frustration etched into every line of his face, the arguments he might have made dissolving before he could voice them.
"I know you," he murmured finally. "I have known you since childhood."
"I know."
"I have loved you since childhood." The confession fell into the space between us, unadorned, honest enough to sting. "Not as a friend. Not as a brother. I have loved you for years, and I have spent most of them afraid to say it. Today I have nothing left to lose."
His hands, bound as they were, trembled slightly. I reached for them, warmth passing between us, a silent acknowledgment of a history that had long preceded this moment.
"I know," I said softly.
His voice grew pleading, ragged with hope. "Then tell me there is a chance. Tell me to wait. I will be patient, I will become whatever you need."
"Chris." I placed my hand over his, grounding both of us in this undeniable reality. "You deserve someone who runs toward you, not someone you must persuade to stay. You are a rare, good person. Someday, you will be the best thing that ever happens to someone. I believe that fully. But that person will not be me."
"Do not tell me that," he said. "Please."
"I have to tell you that. Because you deserve to hear the truth so you can stop waiting for something that is not coming." I squeezed his hands. "You are my friend. You will always be my friend. I could never abandon you. But I cannot give you what you want from me, and pretending otherwise would be the unkindest thing I have ever done to you."
He looked at me for a long time.
Something moved through his face that I recognized as a person arriving at the far side of something they had been resisting for a very long time, not accepting it gracefully exactly, but accepting it.
"You are right," he said quietly. "I cannot force you." A long pause followed before he spoke again. "Friends."
"Friends," I said.
I leaned forward and put my arms around him, and he held me back with his cuffed hands as best he could, and we stayed like that for a moment.
When I pulled back, I looked at him seriously.
"The things you know," I said. "About Étienne. I need you to not share that with anyone."
He looked at his cuffed hands, then at his throat. "I am not sure I have much choice about that either way."
"I know. But I am going to break the seal. I am going to find a way to do it. And once I do, I need your word."
He studied my face.
"You have my word," he said.
"Thank you."
He nodded.
"I think it is also time you and Shanelle went back to Beaumont," I added.
He nodded, slowly, and reached out and patted my hand once with his cuffed ones. "Yeah, I agree."
I looked down at the purple thread running between us, visible to me and to no one else in this room.
It was still there. Still the same color.
But I was hopeful that someday, when the right person reached back toward him with the same force he had always directed outward, it would change.