Chapter 149: Family line 1
MARGAUX
Theodore moved so quickly I barely registered it, his hand locking around Céline’s throat and hoisting her off the floor, her feet flailing helplessly in empty space.
As he held her, his form changed color, the familiar pale translucence sharpening into something electric, a blue so fierce it looked like lightning caged beneath his skin. Céline’s eyes widened in terror, her hands scrabbling desperately at a grip she could now feel, real and inescapable.
It was like she could now see him.
"How do you sleep at night?" His voice came out distorted, layered with something that did not belong to a single throat. "All your manipulation. All your plotting. You made Laurent feel like garbage for years, made him carry guilt that was never his to carry, when you are the actual reason I am dead."
I lunged to help her, hands grasping for something I could not touch, my fingers slicing through cold emptiness where flesh should have been.
I spun toward the door, ready to call for the sentinels, but an unseen force slammed into me, pinning me in place as firmly as if real hands gripped my shoulders.
Theodore’s gaze locked onto mine.
"I am not doing anything wrong," he said.
Céline’s voice came out strangled. "Help me."
He looked back at her with something that might have been amusement if amusement could curdle. "Help you? Why would she do that?" His gaze flicked to me. "You are the reason she is even standing in this room to begin with."
"I am not..."
"What?" The word left me before I could stop it. Partly because of what Theodore had implied and the fact that it was evident that Céline could see him now.
He tossed her toward the ground, releasing his grip entirely, and she crumpled, gasping, one hand at her throat.
"Oh," he said, something almost gleeful in the distortion of his voice. "You did not know."
"What is this about?" I looked between them, my pulse climbing.
"I have been haunting my sister for a very long time," he said. "I am not entirely certain why I can suddenly do this, manifest this fully, affect things physically. I suspect it has something to do with your particular energy filling this room. So let me tell you something that might horrify you properly in appreciation for your help." He drifted closer to her crumpled form. "The boy currently wearing my title, my face, was not hungry for revenge when he first arrived here. He saw an opportunity for a new life. A clean start. But my sister did what she does best. She studied him. Learned everything about him while performing grief and acceptance over her new brother." His voice sharpened. "Then she started planting seeds. The forget-me-nots. Engineering moments to put the two of you in the same room. Reigniting resentment he had not yet fully claimed for himself."
A chill crept into my chest, settling deep and unmoving.
"And as usual," he continued, "it worked beautifully."
He moved toward his sister, looming over her.
"You should know," he said, "she intends to remove him eventually. If she could not spare me, her own brother, or our father, why would she spare some stranger occupying the position she actually wants for herself?"
The cold in my chest deepened into something closer to dread.
"He cannot be telling the truth," I said, mostly to myself, though the words came out aloud.
I thought about the red dress. The humiliation of that altar, the political theater of being handed over like a transaction. And then, despite everything, I thought about how grateful I had become for the outcome of it regardless, because it had brought Étienne back into my life, however broken the path leading there had been. You could not simply skip the bad parts and still remain the same person who had walked through them.
I looked at Theodore, still vibrating with rage, and I made myself speak.
"When I was made the sacrifice for my family," I said, "I wanted to draw blood somewhere. I hated everyone, honestly. My family, my pack, even the people I told myself I was doing this for. The Omegas, the sentinels stationed at that border village, I genuinely wondered if any of them actually cared about my sacrifice, or if I was just another privileged girl performing martyrdom in front of people who had real problems."
A brittle, humorless laugh escaped me.
"But the truth is," I continued, "no one forced that choice on me. I chose it myself. So how dare I be resentful of anyone else for it?"
"What does that have anything to do with what is happening right now?" His form flickered, the electric blue stuttering.
"I am still angry," I said. "Obviously. But ultimately, I made that decision. The same way I know that if Céline had genuinely been responsible for your death, directly, with her own hands, Laurent would never have let it go. Your father either." I held his gaze. "So what did your sister actually do, Theodore? Specifically."
The blue around him flickered again, brighter then dimmer.
"Are you on her side?" he said, the color deepening with the question.
"I am on nobody’s side." I kept my voice steady despite the pressure still holding me in place. "I am being objective."
"Her manipulation clearly exists."
"I am not disputing that it exists." I held his gaze. "But she can only create the opportunity. She cannot make the choice for someone. Ultimately, we make our own decisions." I paused, letting the weight of what came next settle properly before I said it. "You took your own life, didn’t you, Theodore?"
His form flickered violently.
The rage in his expression slowly drained, replaced by something rawer.
"I did not want to," he said, quieter now. "I just wanted a way out. And I trusted my sister. Was I not supposed to trust her? Instead of comfort, she fed poison into my mind, into my heart, every single day until I believed there was no other exit available to me." His voice cracked. "And yes, it was my own hands that tied that noose. My own legs that stepped off that chair. But how dare anyone suggest she carries no fault in this."
He turned back toward Céline, who had managed to push herself partially upright, terror still visible in every line of her body.
"Killing her," he said, "is the correct path forward."
"How was any of that my fault?" Céline’s voice came out raw, desperate. "I comforted you. I was there for you."
"You put the idea in my head."
"Father was never going to accept you the way you were!" The words burst out of her, finally, years of restraint cracking open all at once. "Instead of working through his own disgust, he was simply going to set it aside because you were his son. Because there has never been a stronger hate in his heart than misogyny, apparently. I was right for that role, Theodore. I was always right for it. You never were. But because you happened to be born a man, Father was willing to bend every rule, overcome every prejudice he held, just for you. That was never fair."
"And now," Theodore said, his voice dropping into something dangerously quiet, "Father has handed that same position to a complete stranger. Is that any better?"
Céline’s composure shattered entirely.
"I just wanted to be acknowledged," she said, the words breaking apart as they left her. "I wanted—"
"You wanted power."
His hand shot out and closed around her throat again, lifting her with the same violent ease as before.
She screamed, the sound raw and desperate, and somewhere beyond the room I heard the muffled impact of sentinels throwing themselves against the door, the handle rattling uselessly against a lock that refused to give.