Cameras flashed in blinding bursts, each click echoing like a bullet in the vaulted silence of the cathedral. The scent of lilies and polished marble should have signaled celebration, yet the air was heavy—thick with pity, confusion, and the brittle tension of scandal barely smothered by lace and candlelight.
Adrian Vale stood rigid at the altar, a tall figure cut in black, the weight of the crowd's stares pressing on him like chains. His jaw was sharp, clenched too tight, his storm-gray eyes fixed ahead as though staring at something only he could see.
It should have been her.
The thought battered him again, ruthless and relentless. It should have been Helena—golden laughter, warm hands, a life he'd already planned with her. But Helena was gone, her body broken in twisted steel and shattered glass. And now in her place, they handed him this girl.
Elara Cross.
Helena's sister. The replacement they had chosen. The one forced into white silk because fate had stolen the bride he loved.
And she was walking toward him now.
The long train of her white dress whispered across the aisle, the delicate lace catching the light in brief, holy sparks. Her golden hair, dulled and brittle, spilled loose down her back, framing a face that should have been beautiful—if not for the hollowness carved deep into her cheeks, the tired slope of her mouth, and the vacant calm in her eyes. She moved without hesitation, without trembling, without even the faintest flicker of life.
Like a lamb brought to slaughter.
The whispers rippled through the pews. That's the other one. The illegitimate. The Cross family really did it. How shameless.
Adrian heard them all. He did not silence them.
Elara reached the altar and stopped beside him. She did not look at him. She did not lower her head in shyness or raise it in defiance. She simply...stood. Like a doll posed where someone else had placed her.
The priest's voice boomed through the cathedral, sanctified and hollow. Words about union, love, God's blessing. They were background noise to Adrian's rage. He did not move until the priest said, "You may now kiss the bride."
Then he turned, his hand shooting out to grip Elara's wrist—not tenderly, but with the sharpness of possession. Gasps echoed in the pews. He pulled her close, close enough that the crowd would see intimacy, but his lips never touched hers.
Instead, his mouth hovered at her ear, his voice venom.
"I promise to never love you. Never protect you. I'll make your life hell, and you'll beg for death before this is over."
Elara's lashes fluttered once. That was all.
No flinch. No tears.
She simply absorbed his words like stone absorbing rain—silent, unmoved, as though she had always expected nothing less.
The priest beamed, oblivious, and announced, "Congratulations."
Applause rose, thin and scattered.
Adrian released her with a sharp motion. She didn't stumble. She didn't move at all, except to let herself be turned for the ceremonial walk down the aisle.
The crowd saw a bride and groom beginning their new life. Adrian saw a ghost wearing Helena's face. And Elara—Elara saw nothing at all.
The carriage ride home was wordless.
Outside, the city glittered, oblivious. Guests trailed behind in polished cars, champagne glasses clinking in celebration of a deal signed in blood and ashes. Inside the carriage, silence thickened between the newlyweds.
Adrian leaned back against the seat, his arm braced on the window ledge, his eyes fixed on the blurred city lights. Every nerve screamed to push her away, to curse her name, to throw her out of his life like the insult she was.
But something restrained him.
It wasn't kindness. It wasn't mercy.
It was that maddening calm.
He had expected tears. Rage. Pleading. Anything that would prove she was human enough to be broken. Instead, she sat across from him, spine straight, hands folded loosely in her lap, her gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the glass.
Her face was expressionless, as if she had already rehearsed this moment in her head a thousand times. As if she had known from the start this was her role: the stand-in, the replacement, the expendable sacrifice.
He hated it.
He hated her silence, hated the lifeless way she accepted everything, hated that her lack of reaction left him feeling like he was the one on edge.
He thought of Helena—the softness in her laughter, the warmth in her touch. She had been alive, vibrantly, maddeningly alive. And now he was left with this...hollow shell.
Adrian's fingers curled into a fist on his knee.
Across from him, Elara blinked once, slow.
He wondered, with a sudden, sharp pang, why she wasn't afraid. Why she wasn't breaking.
And why the hell did he feel like he already had?
When the gates of the Vale estate swung open, the carriage rolled into silence broken only by gravel crunching beneath wheels. The house loomed, all glass and stone, lit like a sentinel in the night.
Elara stepped out first, her skirts brushing the ground as though she floated. She didn't look back at Adrian, didn't wait for his hand, didn't falter as the doors opened for them.
Inside, servants bowed. Their eyes flicked to her, then away, quick and sharp, as though looking too long might burn. She was already a ghost in her new home.
Adrian trailed behind her, his gaze cutting through her back like a knife. His chest ached with the ghost of Helena, with the sight of this woman wearing white where she shouldn't.
And Elara—Elara simply walked forward, silent, steady, as though none of it mattered.
She already knew her life.
Already knew her place.
And Adrian Vale, for all his fury, could not shake the unsettling truth—
He had just married a woman who looked at hell and did not flinch.