Chapter 13: The Portrait Gallery
Dinner that evening was quieter than usual, if such a thing was even possible inside Blackthorne Manor.
Evelyn sat at the long table with Lucien on one side and Cassian on the other, though the atmosphere between them was far less tense than before. Perhaps the archive had drained some of the sharper edges from the household. Perhaps everyone was simply too tired to continue pretending the forest outside the walls was not slowly unraveling something beneath their feet.
The servants moved in silence. The candles burned low and steady. Outside the tall windows, darkness had already settled over the estate, and the snow reflected the moonlight in pale silver streaks.
Lucien barely spoke throughout the meal.
Cassian spoke even less.
Evelyn, who had begun to realize that silence in this family was almost as expressive as conversation, could only try not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. She had been dead less than a day in her old world, and now she sat inside a haunted-looking mansion eating soup with a dangerous Alpha and his emotionally overworked son while an ancient seal under the northern forest threatened to wake up.
Normal, she thought dryly. Very normal.
Lucien set down his glass and stood first. "I will be leaving for the northern wall again shortly."
Cassian looked up immediately. "You're going back tonight?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
Lucien gave him a look. "No."
That answer eased Evelyn's tension only slightly. She did not like the way the word sounded in this house. It was never simply no. It always carried a hidden shape beneath it.
Cassian's jaw tightened, but he did not argue. That alone told Evelyn how serious the matter was. When Cassian stopped pushing, it meant something had crossed from ordinary concern into dangerous reality.
Lucien's gaze shifted briefly to Evelyn. "Stay inside."
She gave him a small, dry look. "You say that often."
"It remains important."
That nearly earned a smile from her.
He left a moment later, taking the weight of the night with him. The moment he was gone, the room felt less powerful and more lonely. Cassian remained seated for a while, staring at the half-finished meal in front of him as though appetite had become a distant concept.
Evelyn watched him for a moment before asking softly, "Do you always do this?"
His eyes lifted. "Do what?"
"Act like your own house is waiting to swallow you."
A faint pause.
Then, to her surprise, Cassian leaned back in his chair and let out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "Sometimes it feels that way."
The answer settled between them with unexpected honesty.
Evelyn looked at him more carefully now. He was tired, yes, but there was something else as well, something restrained beneath his composure. He had lived too long in a place where every corner seemed to remember grief. She wondered if the dead Luna's presence still lingered in the manor in ways no one dared to acknowledge.
After dinner, Cassian returned to the archives, and Evelyn found herself without a clear purpose for the evening. Mina had already escorted the servants away, and the eastern wing had settled into a quiet stillness that felt almost too large for one woman to occupy alone. She moved through the corridor with slow steps, her hand trailing lightly over the carved wall panels as she walked.
The manor was beautiful at night.
It was also deeply unsettling.
Paintings lined the upper gallery, old family portraits in heavy gilded frames that watched the corridor with frozen solemnity. Evelyn had passed them before without paying much attention, but now the silence drew her toward them. Something about the archive pages still clung to her thoughts, and the idea of old family secrets made her strangely restless.
The portraits had all been painted in dark tones, the Blackthorne line displayed with severe elegance. Former Alphas stood rigid in ceremonial clothing. Wives sat beside them with restrained expressions and flawless posture. Some children looked proud, some bored, some far too serious for their age.
Evelyn stopped in front of one frame in particular.
The portrait was smaller than the others, positioned slightly farther down the corridor. It showed a former Alpha and his family standing before what looked like a winter garden. Lucien's grandfather, perhaps, based on the resemblance in the eyes. Beside him stood a woman with pale hair and a severe expression. Between them stood a boy, likely a younger Lucien, and another figure at the very edge of the painting partially cut off by the frame.
Evelyn leaned closer.
The fourth figure was a woman.
Her face had been painted over.
Not damaged by age.
Not obscured by dust.
Painted over deliberately, as though someone had taken a brush to her features long after the portrait had been completed.
Evelyn frowned and stepped even closer. The clothing remained visible, and the outline of the figure suggested a slender woman standing a little behind the others. But the face itself had been wiped into a blur of pale strokes.
That was strange.
Very strange.
"Don't touch that."
Evelyn nearly jumped.
She turned sharply and found Cassian standing at the end of the corridor with a stack of books in his arms. He had apparently returned from the archive wing without her noticing, which was both embarrassing and concerning.
She straightened immediately. "I wasn't touching it."
"You were about to."
"I was observing it with great academic interest."
Cassian stared at her with the sort of expression that suggested he found her increasingly difficult to categorize. Then he set the books down on a nearby table and crossed toward the portrait.
Evelyn gestured at the painted-over face. "Did someone damage it?"
Cassian's expression changed.
Not dramatically. Just enough that she noticed.
"No," he said.
"Then why is her face missing?"
He looked away from the portrait rather than answer immediately. "Because no one keeps her image in the main halls anymore."
Evelyn's pulse shifted. "Her?"
Cassian hesitated again, and that hesitation told her more than the answer itself.
"This was the old Luna," he said quietly.
Evelyn went still.
Not the current story's dead wife, then. The previous one. A woman whose portrait had been hidden from the house's main display. Evelyn looked at the painted face again, then toward Cassian. "Why erase her?"
His jaw tightened slightly. "No one erased her. Father ordered the portrait removed from the central gallery after her death."
That still did not explain the painted-over face.
Cassian seemed to understand the question hanging in her expression. "The servants do that now. They say it is disrespectful to leave it visible."
Evelyn looked back at the portrait.
The woman's body was still visible, elegant and composed, but the face had been removed so thoroughly it looked like a wound in the canvas.
Something about it bothered Evelyn more than she wanted to admit.
"Did you know her well?" she asked softly.
Cassian was silent for a long moment.
Then he said, "She used to take me to the greenhouse when I was younger."
The answer was so quiet, so unexpected, that Evelyn looked at him sharply.
He kept his gaze on the portrait. "She smelled like herbs. And rain."
Evelyn said nothing.
"She was not kind in the warm way children like in stories," Cassian continued after a pause. "But she was not cruel either."
That sounded like a complicated woman.
It also sounded like a real one.
Cassian's fingers tightened slightly around the edge of one of the books in his arms. "After she died, no one wanted her image in the halls anymore."
The words carried more weight than their simplicity suggested.
Evelyn's chest tightened unexpectedly. The dead Luna had become a shadow in this house, not because she was hated entirely, but because grief had turned her into something too painful to look at directly.
She glanced down the corridor toward the gallery windows. Snowlight reflected pale across the floor. "Did she ever visit the northern ridge?"
Cassian turned to her in surprise. "Why?"
The answer was immediate enough to confirm her suspicion. She took that as a yes.
Evelyn looked back at the portrait.
Something about the painted-over face, the hidden figure, the greenhouse memory, and the archive warning all began to pull together in her thoughts. The old Luna had known something. Maybe not everything, but enough to matter.
Before she could ask another question, a new set of footsteps sounded behind them.
Both of them turned.
Lucien stood at the far end of the corridor, coat still dusted with snow, expression unreadable in the half-light. His gaze moved first to Cassian, then to Evelyn, then finally settled on the portrait.
The entire corridor seemed to go still.
Cassian straightened. "Father."
Lucien's voice was calm, but not relaxed. "What are you doing here?"
Evelyn looked between them quickly and decided honesty was the safest path. "Looking at a portrait."
Lucien's eyes narrowed just slightly.
Cassian shifted a fraction, as if ready to defend himself or the painting, though Evelyn could not tell which.
Lucien stepped closer to the portrait and looked at the painted-over face in silence for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower than before.
"Do not disturb that one again."
Evelyn frowned. "Why not?"
Lucien did not answer right away.
Instead, his gaze lifted to hers, and the look in it was severe enough to make the air between them tighten.
"Because," he said quietly, "she knew how to reach the northern ridge before anyone else did."
The corridor fell silent.
Evelyn's breath caught.
Lucien looked once more at the painted-over face, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost too quiet to hear.
"And because the last time she went there, she never returned alone."