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The three days Alaric had granted Duke Cedric passed like the tolling of a funeral bell—each sunrise heavier than the last, each night soaked in silence too dense to bear. And when at last the sun climbed to its pitiless height, noon striking with the unyielding voice of fate, the earth itself seemed to still in anticipation.
At the gates of Vale Mansion, beneath the sprawling shadows of ancient oaks, a carriage of impossible grandeur rolled to a stop. Its wheels ground against gravel like the grinding of old bones, and its black lacquered sides shimmered with an otherworldly sheen. The crest of Alaric Blackthorn, wrought in silver and blood-red enamel, gleamed upon its door—a sigil that made servants blanch and guards stiffen. Four obsidian steeds, their eyes glinting like coals, pawed at the earth impatiently, exhaling plumes of smoke that curled into the air like whispers of hellfire.
The household gathered in the echoing silence of dread. Servants clustered in hushed groups, their whispers trembling on the verge of prayer, while the family stood rooted near the great doors of the mansion.
Duke Cedric Vale's face was carved with lines deeper than grief itself. He had fought battles, endured betrayals, and faced kings—but never had his spirit weighed as it did now. To let his younger daughter go was to carve his own heart from his chest, yet to defy the king's edict would mean not merely his death, but the extinction of his bloodline. The Vampire King had already shown leniency where none had been deserved—three days to surrender the girl whose identity had been concealed, three days to say goodbye. That mercy would not be stretched further.
The duke's hand trembled as it rested upon Lyanna's shoulder, the gesture both a comfort and a farewell. His daughter stood beside him, pale as the moon and silent as a prayer, her wide eyes drinking in the dread spectacle of the carriage waiting to consume her.
Behind them, Elara's lips curved into a smile—soft, genteel, and cruel beneath its veil of politeness. She masked her satisfaction as one masks venom in honey. At last, the thorn in her side, the rival in her household, would be removed. Lyanna had always cast too bright a shadow, a reminder that Rowena was not the only jewel in the Vale line. With her gone, there would be no more stolen glances from the duke, no unspoken comparisons, no possibility of Rowena's star being dimmed. Elara's smile lingered like perfume—sweet, poisonous, triumphant.
Rowena, however, stood differently. Her face was blank, a mask of calm indifference that fooled no one who knew her well. Within, suspicion coiled like smoke. She did not rejoice as her mother did. Instead, an unshakable sense of foreboding pressed upon her chest. Trouble followed Lyanna like a second shadow; it had since they were children. To send her sister into the dark maw of Alaric's court was not liberation—it was the opening of a gate to storms yet unseen.
The air within the hall thickened as Cedric took Lyanna's hand, guiding her down the steps. His gait was stiff, his every movement etched with the solemnity of ritual, as though he were walking her not to a carriage but to her grave. His eyes—grey and hollowed by sleepless nights—never left hers, searching her face as if to memorize every flicker of expression before fate carried her away.
The carriage door opened with a resonant creak, the sound echoing like the groan of crypt doors. Inside, velvet as dark as spilled wine beckoned, the interior lavish and suffocating all at once.
Cedric turned to her then, his voice breaking though his tone sought strength.
"My child… my Lyanna," he whispered, his words for her ears alone. "I cannot shield you from this path, but know—my heart walks with you. Whatever storms await, whatever chains may bind you, remember who you are. You are not shadow, you are not pawn—you are my daughter. Hold to that when all else is stripped away."
Lyanna's lips parted, but no words came. Her throat was too tight, her heart too loud. Instead, she nodded, her hand tightening around his as if to draw from him one final measure of courage.
Behind them, Elara's silken voice floated. "Come, my lord. Best not to keep the king's men waiting." And beneath her smooth words lay her delight, barely concealed.
Rowena said nothing. She only watched, her gaze steady upon Lyanna, her mind whispering warnings that no one else seemed to hear.
Finally, with the weight of inevitability pressing down, Cedric guided Lyanna to the carriage. He lifted her into it as though she were still the child he had once cradled, his touch reverent, desperate, unwilling to release. But release he must.
The door closed with a heavy thud, sealing Lyanna within the velvet darkness. Cedric's hand lingered upon the wood a heartbeat longer, then fell away like a leaf from a dying tree.
The carriage jolted forward, wheels biting into gravel, and the mansion receded behind her. Lyanna pressed her face to the window, her breath fogging the glass, her eyes devouring every fragment of the world as it unfurled beyond the iron gates.
For the first time in her life, she was leaving the walls of her father's domain. The countryside stretched before her in sweeping tapestries of autumnal gold and shadowed green. Rolling hills dipped into valleys where rivers coiled like silver serpents, forests whispered secrets in the wind, and villages clung to the earth like fragile dreams.
Her heart swelled with a storm of contradictions. Fear gnawed at her, sharp and insistent, but wonder bloomed beside it, fragile and intoxicating. To see the world beyond the stone, beyond the barred gates—was this freedom or the gilded road to captivity?
She leaned into the window, eyes wide, absorbing it all. The peasant children who stopped to gape at the passing carriage, their laughter ringing faint and free. The women with baskets, pausing mid-step, shading their eyes against the sun as the king's emblem blazed past. The men who doffed their caps stiffly, not from respect but from fear.
Every sight pressed into her, painting her soul with colors she had only imagined. And yet, the deeper the carriage carried her from the only home she had ever known, the heavier her chest became.
What awaited her in Alaric's castle? What games of power, what webs of deceit, what hungers cloaked in velvet and steel? Would she find answers to the whispers of her blood, or only chains more unbreakable than the ones of her gilded cage?
The horses thundered on, their rhythm steady, relentless, like the march of destiny itself. The trees leaned closer, shadows stretching long across the road, as though the world itself leaned in to watch the girl who might shift the balance of empires.
And within her, a question unfurled like a black rose:
What does life hold for me beyond these walls?
And what cruel game does fate yet play with my name?
The road answered only with silence.