Chapter Ten – Elaria
The brush slips from my hand.
It clatters against the hardwood floor, loud in the stillness, but I don’t move to retrieve it. I just sit there, perched on the narrow stool before the antique vanity, Cassian’s shirt draped around me like a second skin. The linen is too large, swallowing my frame, sleeves rolled past my elbows, hem brushing the tops of my thighs. It smells like him—cedar, smoke, something older and darker beneath.
I close my eyes. Inhale.
The scent makes my chest ache.
My fingers, trembling, return to my hair. I drag the brush through again, mechanical. The reflection staring back at me looks soft. Unguarded. Hair tumbling in waves around my face, eyes red-rimmed but bright. There’s a flush to my skin I can’t name, a bite-mark blooming purple at the base of my throat. My pulse ticks against it, wild and traitorous.
What did I do?
My body still remembers. The way his hands moved—hungry, reverent, ruined. The sounds I made, the way I clung to him, the way he—
I grip the edge of the vanity, knuckles going white.
I should feel ashamed.
I should feel violated or cold or at least cautious.
But all I feel is the thud of my heart and the echo of his breath against my skin.
God, I want him again.
What’s wrong with me?
The door creaks open. My spine stiffens.
He steps in, shirtless.
His chest bears that same cruel grace—cut with old scars. There’s a fresh scrape across his shoulder, faint but red. I wonder when he got it. I wonder why I want to press my mouth to it.
He crosses the room and places a worn wooden box on the table beside the mirror. His eyes meet mine.
I shiver.
He lifts a hand and gestures toward the window.
The message is silent but clear.
He’ll be outside. Waiting. Giving me space.
I nod, even though he hasn’t asked for a response. He lingers for a moment, gaze flickering across my face. It doesn’t feel like inspection. It feels like reverence.
And then he’s gone.
The room holds the ghost of him. It buzzes through my veins.
My hand reaches for the box before I even realize it. The wood is smooth beneath my fingertips, the clasp old but firm. My stomach tightens.
I unlatch it.
Inside—letters. Their edges are soft, paper yellowed with time. Some folded neatly. Others crumpled like they were written in a storm.
The topmost is dated ten years ago. They are from Giovanna.
My throat closes.
My fingers hesitate above the paper.
The first letter rests softly in my lap. Its edges are worn, the ink slightly smudged, but the handwriting is unmistakable—rounded, slightly rushed, with the occasional flourish when she got too excited to write neatly.
Giovanna’s voice finds me before the words do.
Letter One — 2007
Elaria,
You’re too young to know but your husband-to-be came. He is my friend, I’ll take good care of him. His name is Cassian. Mom will tell you this later but you were betrothed to him, tied to him. Mom isn’t too happy with this because his family and ours shouldn’t be mingling but Dad isn’t listening. But never mind the family feud—he is handsome, he is kind and caring. I think he is perfect for you.
Your beloved sister.
My lips part. I don’t breathe.
A low ache begins to build—something hollow, sitting behind my ribs like fog creeping over still water. I turn to the next letter. The date is a year later.
Letter Two — 2008
Elaria,
You’re big enough to read now but I don’t think you’ll understand this. Forgive me but I am starting to fall in love with him—your Cassian. I know, I am a terrible sister. When you’re doing your lessons, he sneaks in to keep me company and I know I am crossing the line. But no worries, I know my place. I am certain that he is only being nice to me.
P.S. Mom is always mad at me these days so it makes sense my emotions are all over the place.
Your beloved sister.
I press a hand to my chest like I can hold something together that’s already breaking. The words blur, not from time, but from the water pooling in my eyes.
She knew.
Even then, she knew she was slipping over a line. And she kept writing to me. Confessing. Explaining. Begging me to see her as more than what she was about to do.
I swallow hard and unfold the third letter. My hand shakes as I read.
Letter Three — 2010
Forgive me, I am marrying your Cassian.
Elaria, it’s your sixteenth. I am so excited. I feel so proud watching you grow, my little squirrel. When you read this, you’ll hate me. I have stolen what’s yours. I want to say I did it for you but that’s a lie. A part of me has always wanted him for myself—is it so wrong?
Mom is happy about it. Dad not as much, but she convinced him to go through with it, to give me instead of you so you could have your freedom and a life instead of being used as a barter.
His family begrudgingly agrees, as long as it’s a Fontanesi.
I should tell you this face to face, but I am too ashamed and too embarrassed. I’ll hide this in a letter and I hope one day I’ll have the nerve to show it to you.
Your beloved sister.
A sob rises up my throat.
I press the back of my wrist to my mouth, trying to hold it in. It doesn’t help. It tears out of me—quiet, broken, raw. The kind of sound that only comes when something you never knew you’d lost is handed to you in pieces.
She loved me.
She envied me.
She betrayed me.
And she was sorry.
Letter Four — 2010, Later
Elaria,
He made love to me tonight. Cassian—he took me and he loved me.
I hate myself for telling you this but you’re the only one I can talk to. He is a dream that was never meant to be mine but yours—even this feels so temporary.
Forgive me, Elaria, but I want him. He might be bound to you but I need him. So please, this once Elaria, let me have something that is yours.
Your beloved sister.
I cover my face. The tears fall freely.
My hands tremble as I clutch the next letter—creased, the handwriting more fragile, like it was written between tears.
It’s the final one.
Letter Five — 2011
Elaria,
I am having Cassian’s baby.
I miss you so much. I’m sure Cassian is tired of me yapping about you. You should be nineteen soon and I promise—I’ll tell you everything. You’ll read the letters and I’ll look you in the eyes and tell you the truth.
I know you’ll hate me, but maybe not for long. Maybe you’ll be here with me when I bring my baby into this world.
Maybe I can hold you and smell your hair and kiss your cheek and tell you how much I love you and how sorry I am that things turned out this way.
Your beloved sister.
I hold the last letter to my chest as if it can warm the part of me that’s gone cold. My breath shakes, my body wracked with quiet sobs that echo into the still room. My vision blurs from the tears, but something sits in the box—a flash of faded blue beneath the stack of paper.
I reach for it.
A ribbon. Thin, frayed at the edges, soft from years of wear. I run it between my fingers.
My ribbon.
I remember pressing it into Giovanna’s palm when I was seven. She braided it into her hair before every violin recital, telling me it was her “good luck charm.” I didn’t think she kept it.
The sob that tears from me is different. Lower. Thicker. A dam giving way.
“I forgive you,” I whisper, voice cracking, eyes clenched shut.
“I forgive you,” I cry again, pressing the ribbon to my lips.
I don’t know how long I sit like that. Knees drawn up, the ribbon curled into my fist, her words echoing like a prayer that came too late but still matters.
Eventually, I rise and go outside.
The breeze is soft, brushing my legs beneath the shirt that still smells like him. I feel hollow, raw, like every part of me has been turned inside out.
And then I see him.
Cassian stands at the far edge of the garden, where the marble railing overlooks the vineyards below. The light on his bare skin, painting gold into the lines of his shoulders, the curve of his spine. He doesn’t turn when I approach.
But he knows I’m there.
My footsteps falter, then stop altogether. He faces me.
And when he sees my face, he moves.
He comes to me, not like a man in a hurry but like someone crossing sacred ground.
He lifts a hand—rough, warm, steady—and brushes his thumb beneath my eye. My skin stings where his calluses meet the salt of my tears. His touch is reverent, lingering, like he’s memorizing the shape of grief on my face.
I exhale, shaky and shallow.
“Why do I remember her?” I whisper. “And you? It’s like—”
The ribbon trembles in my grip.
His gaze falls to the ribbon. His expression shifts, darkens, softens.
My lips part. “You bound yourself to me…and her too.”
Tears fall again. I don’t wipe them away.
Cassian nods once.
He steps closer. Close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
I don’t speak.
I just stare at him—and for the first time, I don’t see a stranger. I see every version of us that ever lived, stitched together through someone who never stopped loving us both.
I curl the ribbon in my fingers. It shakes.
So do I.
His fingers wrap around mine. We walk back into the house in silence, his thumb brushing softly over the back of my hand, as if reminding me he’s real.
He stops before a door I don’t remember seeing before.
It creaks open under his hand.
Light pours in.
The walls are covered.
Paintings. Dozens of them.
I step in, drawn as if gravity has shifted.
They’re everywhere—stacked against the walls, hanging above old furniture, resting on easels and frames. Some are incomplete. Some cracked with age. But all of them…her work.
One painting shows two little girls in matching dresses, barefoot and laughing beneath the shade of a lemon tree. Another—Giovanna brushing my hair as I hold a book in my lap, face scrunched in a pout. I choke on a laugh that dies too quickly.
She painted me.
Again and again.
Cassian remains by the door. Watching.
There are paintings of him too.
He’s never looking directly at the viewer. Always turned away, or in profile, or gazing off-frame. But the likeness is unmistakable. The sharpness of his brow. The lines of his mouth, more shadow than flesh. One unfinished piece shows him from behind, seated, his head slightly tilted as if caught in the act of observing something—or someone.
I reach out.
My fingers brush the canvas.
The shift is instant, the pain shoots to my back and then I’m somewhere else—someone else.
I feel her. Her heart. Her breath.
Giovanna.
Cassian sits across the room, back to the window, and she watches him from behind her easel. Her brush hovers, hesitant, before touching the canvas again. She’s not painting for art. She’s painting to keep the moment—this moment—where he’s still hers.
Her chest aches with how full it feels. My heart aches too.
She wants to turn around and smile at him. Wants him to say her name even if he won’t. But more than anything, she wants him to keep looking at her like that. Like she’s a secret he hasn’t spoken aloud.
The trance fades as quickly as it came.
But the emotion stays. Lodged deep in my chest like a breath I forgot to take.
I don’t realize I’ve swayed until Cassian is beside me. His hand steadies the small of my back.
“She loved it when you watched her paint,” I murmur.
His eyes close.
A tear slips past my lashes, tracing the curve of my cheek. “You made her so happy,” I whisper, breath trembling, “her heart almost burst.”
He comes close until his forehead nearly touches mine, breath fanning across my skin. One hand rises and brushes my cheek with the back of his fingers. His thumb catches the tear before it falls. His hand lingers there, cupping my face.
We stay like that—breathing the same breath, time suspended. When he finally leans in, it’s not sudden.
It’s inevitable.
His lips meet mine with reverence. The kiss is soft, then deeper, but never rushed. His mouth parts against mine. His fingers slide into my hair, anchoring me gently, drawing me into the ache.
My hands find the edges of his ribs, the dip of his back. Every part of me presses into him like I’m trying to memorize him.
Tears slip between us.
Mine. His. I don’t know anymore.
He breaks the kiss for only a breath—his forehead pressing to mine, eyes closed, chests heaving in tandem. Then he kisses me again.
It’s like every memory she left inside me is now living in this moment, passing between our mouths. And I let it.
His mouth is on mine and everything else disappears.
The kiss is deep—hot, wet, consuming. His tongue slides past my lips with no hesitation, no permission asked. I give it anyway. My head tips back. My chest presses into him. I’m already breathless, already shaking, and he hasn’t even touched me yet.
Not properly.
He walks me backward without breaking the kiss. One step. Another. His hands are on my hips, firm, directing. My back hits the wall and the sound is quiet—just plaster and breath—but my heart pounds like it echoes.
He pins my wrists above my head in one swift motion. His body presses into mine, thigh between my legs, cock hard against my hip. His mouth never leaves mine. He kisses me like he wants to swallow every sound I haven’t made yet. Like he knows they’re coming.
I whimper into his mouth when his hand slides from my wrist to my throat. His fingers wrap around it—not tight, just firm. Possessive. His thumb presses against the hollow where my pulse jumps like it wants to confess everything.
His mouth moves lower. Over my jaw, my throat, down to my collarbone. He bites there—gentle, then not.
And then his hand moves.
Down.
Slipping beneath the fabric of my underwear like he owns the space already. I gasp against his cheek, hips bucking into his palm without thinking. He’s warm. Rough. His fingers slide straight through the slick heat gathered between my thighs, and I moan—high, involuntary, too loud in the still air.
He groans low in his chest, like the sound turns something in him loose.
Two fingers slide between my folds spreading me open, finding the throb of my clit and circling it until my knees threaten to give out. I brace my weight on his body. He holds my throat still while his fingers sink lower, slipping inside me, stretching me, curling just enough to make me see stars behind my eyelids.
I bite my lip hard, but I can’t stop the sounds. They keep rising—small, breathless, desperate.
He fucks me with his fingers against the wall, mouth devouring mine again, my hands still pinned, my body helpless under his.
The room is heat and breath and skin and everything I’ve tried to hold back unraveling.
The light in the room bends strangely. And I’m not in my body anymore.
I’m watching.
I’m across the room, still, silent, breath caught in my throat as I stare at him.
But it isn’t me he’s touching.
It’s her. My sister
Pinned to the wall in my place, wrists locked above her head, hair falling in damp strands across her face. Her head is tilted back, her throat exposed to his mouth as he kisses her like he’s starving for it. I can see the tremble in her thighs, the way her lips part when he growls low against her skin.
And I feel it.
I feel his hand slipping under her waistband. I feel the warm, thick pressure of his fingers sliding between soaked folds. I feel the stretch as he pushes two fingers inside her—inside me—and my body clenches hard, heat blooming deep and sharp between my legs.
I watch him reach up with his free hand and undo her top, tugging the fabric apart until her breasts spill out, nipples flushed and tight in the open air. He groans like the sight ruins him.
And then his mouth is on her breast.
He sucks deep, lips closing over her nipple, tongue flicking, teeth dragging just enough to make her shudder.
I shudder.
The pull of his mouth, the wet suction, the flick of his tongue—I feel it. I feel it in the tips of my breasts, aching, raw. My nipples harden instantly, breath caught in my chest as his mouth worships her body like he did mine.
I watch him thrust his fingers harder into her. Her head knocks back against the wall with a gasp, and I feel the stretch in my core, the tightness, the hot rush of slickness that coats his hand.
Her eyes flutter open—and for a heartbeat, she looks straight at me.
I try to step back, but I have no feet.
I try to close my eyes, but I am the eyes, wide and fixed on the way he grips her thighs, on the way he pumps his fingers into her like he knows every edge of her pleasure. Every time her mouth parts, a soundless moan on her lips, my own lips twitch. Every time he kisses the slope of her breast, I swear I feel his mouth on mine—hot, wet, consuming.
Because every kiss he places on her skin, every moan he draws out of her mouth, every curl of his fingers inside her.
Air floods in, sharp and cold, and I realize I’m back—not watching, not floating, but inside myself. Inside this trembling, aching body, pinned to the wall, his fingers buried in me again, just like before. But this time it’s worse. Or better. Or both.
Because I can still feel everything.
The ghost of her and the rawness of me. The echo and the truth.
His fingers are moving faster, curling deep inside me. My hips lift, grinding into his palm, chasing it. My clit pulses with every stroke, nerves lit up, wet slick pooling down my thighs.
I don’t speak. I can’t.
But my mouth is open. Gasping.
He knows I’m close. He can feel the way I clench around him—tight, desperate. His thumb finds my clit, circling, pressing.
The pressure builds in my belly like fire winding tight around my spine. My toes curl inside my shoes, my legs start to give, but he holds me in place, one hand on my throat again, the other still fucking me with brutal precision.
It builds.
And builds.
Until it breaks.
I come with a cry I can’t control, my head snapping back, my body arching into him, around him, because of him. My pussy clamps around his fingers so hard it aches, waves of pleasure crashing through me—sharp, wet, devastating.
My vision whites out. My breath stutters.
I shudder through it—held still by his body, his hands, the force of my own orgasm wrecking me against the wall.
And through the haze, I swear I see her again.
Behind my eyes.
Smiling. Satisfied.
Like the climax was hers too.