Chapter 64
Lila
I knew something had shifted the moment I stepped into the hall.
It was in the silence that followed my footsteps. The way the girls at the end of the corridor stopped talking the second I came into view. A glance. A smirk. One of them leaned into the other’s ear like they couldn’t help themselves.
Emma caught up to me by the tea table, her tray nearly toppling from how quickly she moved. “Hey,” she said too brightly. “You didn’t eat yet?”
I gave her a look, and her smile faltered. “I tried but I can’t stomach it.”
I kept my head high through morning etiquette drills and lunch. Let them stare. Let them speculate. I didn’t care–at least, that’s what I told myself as moved through the day like smoke slipping through cracks.
It wasn’t until I returned to my room that I saw it.
A single fold of newsprint, just barely tucked beneath the threshold of my door. The palace seal inked in red at the corner. Official distribution or trial- related news.
I picked it up slowly, my hands already starting to feel cold.
The image caught me first. Full color. Crisp. Damon, standing tall at a charity event held for the Crescent Moon Initiative. The article described it as an annual outreach hosted by the palace. What mattered was the image.
Damon was smiling.
Not the thin, polite curve he offered at banquets or during trial announcements. This smile was smaller, deeper. Almost genuine.
And beside him, Nora.
Dressed in pale silver, her hand resting lightly on his arm as she turned to laugh at something just out of frame. His gaze wasn’t on her, not exactly. But the warmth in his expression could’ve fooled anyone who didn’t know better.
A faint ringing started in my ears.
I looked down at the headline:
“Quiet Storm: Lady Nora rises in favor with His Highness and his Court.”
The subheading for the next article was worse: “A deeper look at the most mysterious contender–and why some say her silence hides ambition.”
J sank onto the edge of the bed, the paper crinkling as I opened the rest of the article. Quotes from unnamed palace staff. “She’s not like the others.” “Keeps to herself too much.” “Seems calculated.” The word untrustworthy was used twice. Once in bold.
This one was about me.
They said I had Damon’s attention, but not his loyalty. That I was rising through the trials without offering anything of myself. An outsider who knew how to use her looks and just enough tragedy to charm/her way through the competition.
They called me ambitious. As if everyone in this Palace was anything but.
I read every word. Twice. I didn’t skim. I didn’t cry.
The worst part wasn’t the speculation or the insult. It was how plausible it all sounded. Like they’d stitched together a version of me from just enough
truth to make the rest of the lie believable.
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Chapter 64
Even I had to admit it was convincing.
The image of Damon and Nora felt like the final punctuation. I stared at it longer than I meant to, committing it to memory–not the image trail, feeling It left behind.
I folded the paper carefully, smoothing the creases, and laid it on my desk.
It didn’t matter if it was true. It mattered that people would believe it. And that, maybe, Damon would too.
The candle burned low on my desk, its light flickering over the folded newspaper like it might catch fire if I stared long enough,
I hadn’t moved in over an hour.
The picture still stared back at me–Damon’s smile, Nora’s soft posture beside him. I traced the edge of the image with my thumb. It was glossy. Staged. Carefully chosen for impact.
And it had worked.
Ruby stirred at last, a low growl vibrating inside my chest like an echo. This isn’t truth, she snapped. They don’t know you. They don’t see what we’ve survived.
My fingers tightened around the paper.
I hadn’t realized how easily my silence could be turned into something against me, something dangerous. Not just mysterious–but manipulative.
Ruthless.
It was everything I feared someone would say the day they looked too closely at me and saw past the lie.
And yet, I couldn’t summon rage. Not the kind Ruby wanted. Not the fury that would send this paper into flames or have me storming into the media office demanding a retraction.
No, what settled in me was colder. Sharper. A kind of stillness that felt like frost creeping under my skin.
You should spar, Ruby said eventually, a whisper now. It would help.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t feel like crying either. Didn’t even feel the tightness behind my eyes. Just the ache in my chest that pulsed like a bruise.
It wasn’t just the article. It was the realization that the image of Damon–smiling beside someone else–had hit me harder than all the insults combined.
I should have expected it.
Of course there would be other events: Other women. Other smiles. He was the King. That was the whole point of this selection.
And I was… a lie wrapped in borrowed silk.
My thumb brushed the edge of the paper again. The image. The articles. The dozens of eyes that would be reading it, whispering about the cold, calculating girl pretending to belong among them.
My chest rose and fell, slowly, deliberately. Then I reached across the desk, opened the top drawer of my writing table, and cleared a space between ink bottles and folded letters. I slid the clipping inside and closed it with a quiet click.
Not to keep it. Not to revisit. Just to remember.
Let it be a warning. Let it be the mirror I held up to my own foolishness the next time I thought kindness would save me. The next time I thought a kiss in a greenhouse could rewrite the script of who was pretending to be.
This place doesn’t reward vulnerability. And if I wanted to survive it, Thad to stop hoping it would.
No more kisses. No more pastries.
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Chapter 64
I stood and crossed the room to the vanity. The mirror was slightly warped near the edges, enough to make my reflection blur if I tilted my head just en
I stared anyway. And a new me stared back. Perfect posture. Passive gaze. A well too quiet to be anything but a threat.
I lifted my chin. “Let them watch,” I whispered.
Ruby didn’t speak this time, but I felt her there. Not angry now just sad.
We were becoming someone else. Again.
I returned to the bed, the sheets cold against my skin as I lay back without undressing. My hands rested on my stornach, the only warmth coming from the pulse beneath my skin and the quiet thrum of my wolf curled somewhere deep inside.
The palace was quiet around me, but the words still echoed. The photo still burned.
And when I finally slept, I dreamed not of Damon, but of fire–eating through paper, through silk, through the walls of the palace itself.
But I remained untouched at the center.
Watching it all burn.
