Elara's POV
"Our mothers knew each other?"
Elara's hands shook as she held the photograph of Dorian's dead mother. The same crime scene style as her father's photos. The same red paint message.
Dorian stared at the image, his face pale as death. "That's impossible. My mother died of illness. The doctors said—"
"The doctors lied." Elara flipped the photo over, showing him the message. "Just like they lied about my father's heart failure. Vincent killed them both."
"No." Dorian grabbed the photo, studying it desperately. "No, I was there when she died. She was sick for months. Coughing, fever, wasting away—"
"Poison can mimic illness." Elara's voice cracked. "Especially the slow-acting kind. My father taught me that."
The room spun. Servants whispered around them. Vincent watched from the doorway with barely concealed satisfaction.
Dorian's eyes met Elara's, and she saw the same realization dawning that she'd had earlier.
Everything was connected. Their parents' deaths. The conspiracy. Vincent's hatred.
This went deeper than either of them knew.
"Everyone out," Dorian said quietly. When no one moved, he shouted, "OUT! Now!"
Servants scattered. Even Vincent retreated, though his smile never faded.
Alone in the destroyed room, surrounded by evidence of their parents' murders, Elara and Dorian stood in stunned silence.
"We need to leave," Elara whispered. "This house isn't safe. Vincent will—"
"No." Dorian's voice turned hard as steel. "Running is what he wants. We stay. We fight. We find proof and destroy him."
"How? He controls everything here!"
"Not everything." Dorian looked at her with fierce determination. "Come with me. There's something I need to show you."
He led her out of the room, down hallways she didn't recognize, up a spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever. Finally, they reached a door locked with multiple mechanical seals.
Dorian pressed his hand against a panel. The locks clicked open one by one.
"No one else can access this room," he said. "Not Vincent. Not the servants. Just me. And now you."
He pushed the door open.
Elara stepped inside and stopped breathing.
The laboratory was perfect.
Sunlight poured through tall windows. Workbenches lined the walls, covered with gleaming equipment—distillers, burners, mixing vessels, everything organized with perfect precision. Shelves held hundreds of ingredients in labeled jars, some so rare Elara had only read about them in books.
This wasn't just a laboratory. It was a dream.
"I don't understand," Elara whispered, walking forward like she was in a trance. She touched a crystal alembic, tears stinging her eyes. "This equipment... these ingredients... some of these are worth more than my father's entire laboratory."
"I've been collecting them for two years." Dorian's voice was quiet behind her. "Since I started investigating the conspiracy. I thought... if I ever found an alchemist brave enough to help me, I'd need the best tools to give them."
Elara turned to face him. "You built this for me?"
"I built it for whoever would help uncover the truth." But his eyes said something different. "You were always my first choice."
"Why?" The question burst out raw and desperate. "Why me? We were rivals. We hated each other!"
"I never hated you." Dorian stepped closer. "I envied you. Admired you. Wanted to be worthy of competing with you. When your scandal happened, when Marcus stole your work and the Guild destroyed you, I started investigating because it didn't make sense. You were too brilliant to be a fraud."
"You investigated my case?"
"For two years. That's how I found the connections—your father's research, my mother's death, the conspiracy to keep our disciplines separated." His voice dropped. "I needed you specifically because you're the only alchemist brilliant enough to finish what our parents started."
Elara's throat tightened. "What did they start?"
"I don't know yet. But this laboratory has everything you need to find out." Dorian gestured to the room. "Every ingredient, every tool, every book my mother owned. It's yours now. All of it."
"I can't accept—"
"You already did. We have a deal, remember?" His smile was sad. "Besides, someone should believe in your work. Someone should give you the chance you deserve."
The tears Elara had been holding back finally fell. Two years of pain and loss and anger poured out. She covered her face, embarrassed to cry in front of him.
Warm arms wrapped around her.
Dorian held her while she sobbed, not saying anything, just offering comfort. His heartbeat was steady against her ear.
"I'm sorry," Elara gasped when she could speak. "I'm being weak—"
"You're being human." Dorian's hand stroked her hair gently. "You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to hurt. You've earned it."
Finally, the tears stopped. Elara pulled back, wiping her face.
"Thank you," she said. "For this. For everything."
"Work," Dorian said simply. "That's all the thanks I need. Find what our parents were working on. Prove Vincent killed them. That's worth more than gratitude."
He started to leave, giving her privacy.
"Dorian?" He turned back. "Stay. Please. I don't want to be alone right now."
Something flickered in his eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
So he stayed, sitting quietly at one workbench while Elara explored the laboratory. She opened jars, examined tools, ran her fingers over equipment she'd dreamed of using.
Slowly, the grief faded. Replaced by something else.
Purpose.
"I'm going to start with my father's emotion-based formulas," she said, pulling out ingredients. "If I can recreate them from memory, maybe I'll find clues about what he was really working on."
"I'll help however I can."
They worked through the night. Dorian asked questions, handed her materials, took notes. He was surprisingly good at following alchemical instructions despite his mechanical magic background.
As dawn light crept through the windows, Elara finally had a completed potion—a simple emotion detector that would glow different colors based on the drinker's true feelings.
"Try it," she told Dorian, offering the small vial.
He hesitated. "What will it show?"
"Whatever you're really feeling. No lying. No hiding."
"That's terrifying."
"That's the point. My father believed magic should reveal truth, not hide it."
Dorian took the vial and drank. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the remaining liquid in the vial began to glow.
Not one color. Multiple colors swirling together—gold and red and deep blue, mixing and shifting like emotions too complex to name.
"What does that mean?" Dorian asked.
Elara stared at the colors, her heart racing. Gold for admiration. Red for desire. Blue for trust.
The potion was showing Dorian's feelings for her.
And they were far more complicated than a fake engagement should allow.
"It means..." Elara's voice came out barely a whisper. "It means the potion works."
Before Dorian could respond, before Elara could explain what the colors meant, a sound made them both freeze.
Footsteps in the hallway outside. Slow. Deliberate.
Coming toward the laboratory that supposedly only Dorian could access.
"That's impossible," Dorian breathed. "No one else has the code—"
The door handle turned.
They both backed away as the door swung open.
A figure stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway so Elara couldn't see their face.
But she recognized the voice immediately when they spoke.
"Well, well. Look what we have here. The disgraced alchemist and the desperate heir, playing scientist."
It was Marcus.
Her ex-fiancé. The man who'd stolen everything from her.
He was here. In Dorian's private laboratory. The one supposedly no one else could access.
Which meant Marcus had been working with Vincent all along.
And if Marcus was here now, it meant the conspiracy was bigger than either of them realized.
Marcus stepped into the light, and Elara saw he wasn't alone.
Behind him stood Celeste, her sister, smiling that cruel smile Elara remembered too well.
And behind them both, guards in Guild enforcer uniforms blocked the only exit.
"Did you really think we wouldn't find out about your little arrangement?" Marcus's voice dripped with mockery. "Vincent told us everything. The fake engagement. The investigation. All of it."
"What do you want?" Dorian demanded, stepping in front of Elara protectively.
"What we've always wanted." Marcus pulled out a document—official Guild papers with seals and signatures. "Elara Veylin, you're under arrest for illegal alchemical experimentation, conspiracy to defraud the Guild, and the murder of Master Alchemist Caius Veylin."
Elara's world tilted. "Murder? My father? That's insane!"
"Is it?" Celeste spoke for the first time, her voice sickeningly sweet. "You were the last person to see him alive. You had access to poisons. And now we have a witness who saw you give him a potion the day before he died."
"That's a lie! I loved my father!"
"Tell it to the magistrate." Marcus nodded to the guards. "Take her."
The guards moved forward.
Dorian grabbed Elara's hand. "You're not taking her anywhere."
"Stand aside, Mr. Ashcroft," Marcus said coldly. "Or we'll arrest you too for harboring a criminal."
"She's my fiancée. You can't—"
"Your fake fiancée." Marcus smiled triumphantly. "We have proof of your arrangement. Documents. Witness statements. The engagement is void. Which means she has no legal protection."
The guards were getting closer.
Elara's mind raced. She could fight. Run. Use the potion ingredients as weapons.
But there were too many of them.
She was trapped.
"Dorian," she whispered. "Let them take me."
"No!"
"If you fight, they'll arrest you too. Then who'll prove I'm innocent?" She squeezed his hand one last time. "Find the truth. Clear my name. Promise me."
His eyes were anguished. "Elara—"
The guards grabbed her arms, yanking her away from him.
As they dragged her toward the door, Elara looked back one last time.
Dorian stood in the laboratory they'd worked in together, surrounded by equipment and potions, his hand still outstretched where hers had been.
And in that moment, Elara realized something that terrified her more than arrest.
Somewhere between the fake engagement and the laboratory and the defense at dinner, her feelings had stopped being pretend.
She'd fallen for Dorian Ashcroft.
And now she might never see him again.
The last thing she saw before the guards forced her into the hallway was Marcus holding up a vial of glowing liquid—the emotion potion she'd just made.
"Evidence," he said with a cruel smile. "Of illegal alchemy. This alone is enough to have you executed."
The door slammed shut.
And Elara was dragged away to face charges for murdering her own father.