Instead, he simply showed her his hand, holding it steady in the air between them—a silent request she knew all too well.
With a sigh that was both exasperated and fond, Celastine adjusted her dress, the fine fabric whispering against her skin.
She slid off his lap, her movements fluid and graceful, and walked to the mahogany desk.
From a drawer, she retrieved a heavy fountain pen and a sheet of thick, cream-colored paper. She placed them in his waiting hand, her fingers lingering against his palm for a moment too long.
Aelion's focus was absolute. The pen scratched decisively across the paper as he wrote, not just tips, but a detailed strategic brief.
He outlined arguments, anticipated counterpoints from the board members, and scripted the exact diplomatic tone she should use. He drew a small, precise flowchart showing the direction in which she should forcefully, yet elegantly, push the meeting.
Celastine took the paper, her eyes scanning the meticulous script. As she read, her perfectly composed mask began to fracture. A deep frown etched itself onto her beautiful features.
"I am no longer a little girl," she stated, her voice cold, the earlier warmth utterly vanished.
She crumpled the edge of the paper in her fist. "It's my second year as CEO. I negotiated the Azure Mergers. I quelled the shareholder revolt. I do not need to be managed."
Aelion's slight smile returned, but it was tinged with an ancient sadness that reached his eyes. "You are still my little sister after all," he said, his voice soft but firm, a bedrock beneath her tempest. "I need to look after you. It is the only thing I have left to do."
The words, meant to be tender, struck her like a physical blow.
Her eyes, those mesmerizing pools of silver, began to glow with a dangerous, internal light. 'He still sees me as the child trailing behind him. He doesn't see the woman who would burn the world to cinders if it meant he could walk in the ashes.'
"You should focus on recovering now," she said, her voice dropping to a low, almost venomous register. The air in the room grew heavy and still.
The mention of recovery shattered his composure. Aelion's eyes, once a bright, fiery amber, now swam with pools of inky blackness, a side effect of the curse that held him captive.
His gaze fell to the blanket draped over his unresponsive legs, a constant, taunting monument to his failure.
"It's impossible," he whispered, the words laced with a bitterness that choked him.
'This chair is my tomb. My body is my prison. And the worst of it is that she is forced to see me like this—a broken general giving orders from a ruined fortress.' "I can't recover. Some wounds are permanent, Celastine."
He didn't look up. He couldn't bear to see the pity in her eyes. So he missed the way her face crumpled, the way her breath hitched. He missed the single tear that traced a path through her meticulously applied makeup.
Celastine's shoulders began to shake, a barely controlled tremor of anguish and furious, helpless love.
'Impossible? Nothing is impossible for you. It can't be. I won't allow it.' Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode toward the door, each step a battle against the sob building in her throat.
She left the room, closing the door behind her with a quiet, definitive click. Alone in the hallway, the dam broke. A ragged, heart-wrenching sob escaped her, quickly muffled by her hand pressed to her mouth.
And back in the study, Aelion sat frozen. He stared at the door, the echo of her departure hanging in the air.
The room, once charged with her presence, felt vast and empty. And he could have sworn, on his very soul, that he had heard the faint, unmistakable sound of her sobs—a sound that tortured him far more than any physical pain ever could.
Aelion sighed, a sound that carried the weight of a thousand unspoken burdens, and leaned back in his chair.
The leather creaked in sympathy. His gaze, still clouded with the afterimage of Celastine's pain, drifted around the study—a gilded cage filled with memories of a life that was no longer his. 'I am an anchor, chaining her to the seabed of my own despair. She deserves to soar, not to be weighed down by my wreckage.'
His finger, moving with a practiced, weary motion, found a small, almost invisible button on the armrest of his wheelchair. With a soft, hydraulic hiss, the chair began to transform.
Armrests folded outward, a canopy arched from behind, and panels slid into place, encasing him in a sleek, futuristic pod. The final touch was a dome of transparent, blue-tinted glass that slid smoothly over him, sealing him in a silent, technological cocoon.
The cacophony of the world—the crackle of the fire, the phantom echo of her sobs—muffled into nothingness. Inside, there was only the hum of machinery and the deafening roar of his own memories.
The blue tint of the glass washed over his vision, pulling him down, down, down into the depths of the past...
Twenty-two years ago.
The man known only as Vincent was a ghost, a whisper in the underworld, a man of immense skill and shadow who operated without a name.
Then, he and his wife vanished. Not a trace. The world, which never truly knew him, simply forgot. For a year, there was only silence.
And then, he returned. But the man who came back was not the one who had left.
The cold efficiency in his eyes had been tempered by a profound, weary love. And in his arms, he carried two infants, a boy and a girl, wrapped in blankets that seemed too fine, too otherworldly for this plane.
With them, he ceased to be Vincent the ghost. He became Vincent Velthane, a man with a name, a past, and a future he was determined to build.
The children, Aelion and Celastine Velthane, were his sun and moon. From that moment, Vincent's rise was not just rapid; it was meteoric.
He built the Velthane empire from nothing, brick by brick, deal by deal, his shadowy past giving him an uncanny edge in the cutthroat world of business.
He built it not for power, but for them. A fortress to keep them safe. A legacy to give them a future. For twelve years, the fortress held.
Twelve years later.
The memory played out in Aelion's mind with the cruel clarity of a high-definition nightmare.
They were coming back from school, a typical day. Aelion, twelve, already serious and protective of his younger sister.
Celastine, also twleve, chattering excitedly about a project. Then, the limousine sputtered and died on the rain-slicked street.
"The house is just a five-minute walk, Master Aelion," the flustered butler had said, peering at the storm clouds. "We can wait for another car, or..."
They chose to walk. The rain began as a drizzle and quickly escalated into a torrential downpour, laughing children one moment, two soaked figures running and shrieking the next. They ran hand-in-hand, Celastine's small hand trusting and warm in his.
The sound of the truck was swallowed whole by the thunderous roar of the rain and their own laughter. Aelion's world was a blur of grey sky and wet pavement. But a flicker of light—high beams, diffuse and enormous through the sheet of rain—caught the very edge of his vision.
There was no time to think. Only a primal, instinctual drive honed by a lifetime of being her protector. He didn't shove her; he threw his entire body into a powerful, desperate push, launching her forward, out of the path, onto the safety of the grassy curb.
The impact was not a sound, but a cessation of all sound. A universe of pain condensed into a single, shattering moment. The sickening crunch of his own bones breaking was a sound he felt, not heard. Then, nothing but blackness.
He awoke three months later, disoriented, in a sterile white room. The world had moved on without him.
His first conscious act was to try and move his legs. Nothing. A void where sensation should have been. A permanent silence in his own body. He dropped out of school that same year. What was the point? His future as the heir, the athlete, the protector, was erased in an instant.
And that was the genesis of it. The moment his world shrank to a hospital room, Celastine's did too. Her guilt was a seed, watered by his sacrifice and her ferocious love, and it bloomed into a terrifying, all-consuming obsession. Her watchful eyes were always on him. Her life became an orbit around his sun. He was her reason, her guilt, her god. Under her constant watch, he was never alone, yet never truly seen—only monitored, cared for, and smothered.
They turned eighteen. A semblance of a normal life was almost within grasp. Then, another blow, delivered by a cruel fate. Their parents, Vincent and his beloved wife, went on a business trip. The plane went down over the ocean. No survivors. The fortress had fallen.
____
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