Chapter 51: True North 1
ÉTIENNE
The knock pulled my attention from the papers Laurent had left scattered across my desk as he left, seemingly to pacify Marguax on my behalf. Plenty of reports were about border movements. Updates on pack finances. Things that should have mattered but felt increasingly hollow the longer I stared at them.
"Come in."
The door opened. Séverine stepped inside with the kind of careful grace she’d perfected over years of navigating spaces that didn’t quite welcome her. Her eyes found mine immediately. The question written across her face was one I’d been expecting since the moment I’d pulled Margaux from that bathtub.
"Is there new information?" She closed the door behind her with a soft click. "About who attacked the girl... Margaux?"
I leaned back in my chair and kept my expression neutral behind the stag mask. "You shouldn’t worry about that."
"But I am worried." She moved closer to the desk. Her fingers twisted together in front of her waist. "Someone tried to kill the girl in our own estate. A supposed witch at that? How can I not be concerned?"
"Breakfast will be ready soon." I gestured vaguely toward the window where morning light painted the gardens in gold. "You should get it out of your mind. I promise you it will be over before you know it."
Her shoulders relaxed slightly. The tension that had been holding her spine rigid eased just enough to be visible.
"It helps that it wasn’t rogues." I tilted my head and studied her reaction. "Right?"
She nodded quickly. Too quickly. "Yes. That would have been... complicated."
The lie sat between us like smoke. Visible if you knew to look for it but easy enough to pretend you couldn’t see. She knew something. Maybe not everything, but enough to make her movements careful and her words measured.
I stood and crossed the space between us. My hand reached for her face. My fingers brushed against her cheek with the kind of gentleness that had always come easier with her than it should have.
"I can tell there is something else you want to say. You can say it."
Her breath hitched. Her eyes searched mine through the mask’s openings. "I would say the same thing about you."
"What do you mean?"
"I just feel like there is something you’re not telling me." Her voice dropped lower. I hated how quiet she got. I hated the way it suggested vulnerability. It was something she rarely showed. "Like you’re holding something back."
"What could that be?" I let my thumb trace the line of her jaw. "I’m always honest with you."
The words tasted wrong even as I spoke them. Honest? What a fucking joke. At this point, it felt like I’d built our entire relationship on half-truths and carefully constructed performances. But she needed to believe in my honesty the same way people needed to believe in gods they’d never seen help.
"Okay." She took a breath that made her chest visibly rise and fall. "I’ll be honest then."
My hand stilled against her skin.
"I stayed in your study for a while last night." Her words came faster now. Like she’d been holding them behind a dam that had finally cracked. "And I watched that video. The one from the security footage."
"Séverine..."
"It sounds like you know where I’m going."
I dropped my hand and stepped back. The distance felt necessary. Like I needed space to breathe properly while this conversation unfolded. "I can. Because I know you."
"I can feel what you feel too." She wrapped her arms around herself. A defensive posture that made her look smaller than she was. "That’s the thing. The bond we share. It lets me sense when you’re... when something shifts."
The bond. Right. The one we’d cultivated through years of proximity and shared goals and the kind of intimacy that grew from mutual understanding rather than divine intervention. Not a mate bond. Never that. But real enough in its own way.
"How did you know she was in danger?"
The question landed like a physical blow. My chest tightened. Laurent had hinted at this exact conversation. He’d warned me that Séverine was too observant to miss the implications. That my reaction speed had been too fast to explain away with pure instincts and luck.
Panic crawled up my throat. I swallowed it down and forced my voice to stay level.
"I just knew."
"You just knew." She repeated the words slowly, as if testing their weight. "You were in your study. She was in the bathroom. There were walls between you. Doors. Distance. But somehow you just knew the exact moment she needed help."
"Séverine—"
"I’m worried, Étienne." She took a step toward me. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears that hadn’t fallen yet. "She’s someone from your past. Someone who probably knows you without all your masks and the locked doors. What you once shared with her was intimate."
My jaw clenched beneath the mask. I could feel the wood pressing into my skin with the force of it.
"Even I happen to know there is a thin line between love and hate." Her voice cracked on the last word. "And sometimes that line gets crossed without people realizing it’s happening."
"I don’t like what you’re implying."
The words came out harder than I’d intended. Sharp enough that Séverine flinched. Her arms tightened around herself like she was trying to physically hold her body together.
Fear flashed across her face. Real fear that made my stomach turn because I’d put it there.
"I apologize." She dropped her gaze to the floor. "I was just letting my feelings be known. I didn’t mean to overstep."
The apology sat wrong in my chest. Séverine had every right to question what was happening. Every right to demand answers about why I’d moved with inhuman speed to save someone I’d spent years claiming to hate. Someone I did hate. But watching her shrink under my anger made me feel like the monster Margaux had called me.
"I assure you nothing like that is happening." I softened my tone deliberately. "Nor will it happen."
She looked up. Hope sparked in her expression. Fragile and desperate in a way that made my throat tight.
"That calms my heart." Her shoulders dropped slightly. Then she straightened again like she was gathering courage. "I do think it’s time you meet my father. To propose marriage properly."
Marriage... Right? I did promise. But for some reason now... the word hung in the air between us with weight I wasn’t prepared to carry.