The morning after the Ashford revelation was unsettlingly quiet.
The mansion that once buzzed with idle chatter, servants humming to themselves, and Cassandra's soft piano tunes had turned still — as if even the walls were holding their breath.
Cassandra stood by her bedroom window, her fingers gently resting on the frosted glass. Her eyes traced the thin cracks in the ice outside, the kind that spiderwebbed across the corners like fragile truths waiting to shatter.
She hadn't slept.
How could she? Not after what she'd learned.
Her father's connection to the Ashford experiments.
Julian's real mission.
And worst of all… that none of it had been a coincidence.
A soft knock at the door broke through her haze.
"Cassie?" Julian's voice was low. Cautious. "Can I come in?"
She didn't answer, but she didn't stop him either.
The door creaked open. He entered, dressed in dark wool and tension. His curls were slightly damp, probably from the snow, and his jaw was tighter than she'd ever seen it.
"You're up early," he said.
"I never went to sleep."
Julian nodded. "Me neither."
Silence stretched between them — not the comfortable kind, but the heavy kind that dripped like melting icicles between two people too scared to speak first.
"I shouldn't have kept things from you," Julian said. "But I thought I was protecting you."
"That's always the excuse," Cassandra replied quietly, not with anger, but with something colder: disappointment.
"I know. But—" He took a step closer. "You deserve the truth now."
She turned to face him fully, arms crossed, hair falling softly over her shoulder. "Then tell me everything. From the beginning."
Julian exhaled.
"There's a program — it started years ago. The Ashford Line wasn't just aristocratic; it was scientific. Your father, your uncle, even your grandfather… they were part of something secret. Genetic enhancements. Experiments done on children. You and I— we were both subjects. But only one of us remembers."
Cassandra felt her breath catch.
"My memory...?"
"They wiped parts of yours when you were eight. After the accident. It wasn't just a carriage crash, Cassie. It was a cover-up."
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "That's not possible."
Julian stepped forward and gently took her hand. "It is. And I think someone is trying to start the project again."
She pulled away, pacing. Her thoughts spun faster than the snow outside.
"All this time… everything was a lie?"
"Not everything," Julian said quickly. "Not me. Not what I feel for you."
That stopped her.
He walked closer. "You're the only thing that's ever been real. I don't care what they planned, what they did. I care about you. Cassandra, I—"
She didn't let him finish.
She kissed him.
Not gently. Not like before.
This kiss was fierce. Desperate. Like two people finally admitting what they've known all along — that love, even in a storm of secrets, was still the most powerful truth of all.
When they pulled apart, their foreheads rested together.
"What do we do now?" she whispered.
Julian looked into her eyes.
"We burn it all down."
Just then, a shrill alarm rang through the mansion — loud, echoing, and unmistakably dangerous.
They both froze.
"That's the security system," Julian muttered.
Cassie's eyes widened. "You think someone—?"
Before she could finish, Julian had already grabbed his coat and a pistol from the drawer.
"Stay behind me," he ordered.
But Cassandra wasn't the stay-behind type. She reached into her drawer and pulled out her mother's dagger, the one she kept hidden since she was thirteen.
"Not this time," she said, following him down the hallway.
As they crept through the shadows of Ashford Manor, snow fell harder outside.
But inside, something darker had already arrived.
And this time, it wouldn't leave quietly.