Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
BASTION
She sat on the edge of the bed. Shoulders tight. Hands twisted in her lap.
The silence was wrong. Not her soft quiet—the kind I knew how to fill with touch but the kind that meant she was bracing.
My chest locked.
“Emilia.” My voice came low, even, though my body already knew. “What is it?”
Her fingers tightening. She didn’t look up.
“I need to tell you something,” she whispered.
The air shifted and my stomach turned. Luca stilled on her other side, his shoulders tight, but his eyes didn’t move. Waiting. Calculating.
Her eyes flickered to me. Just for a second.
Her lips parted, then closed again. Her knuckles went white.
“On my twenty-first…” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “On my twenty-first birthday… I inherited the Liria Accord.”
The words fell broken. The world went still around me.
That wasn’t possible .
The Accord was the Adams dynasty’s spine. Its lifeline. The crown that kept their seat steady. It wasn’t given to daughters.
But she sat there trembling, crying, saying it anyway.
“The advisors—they won’t leave me alone…” she swallowed, words tumbling out in pieces. “They said new contracts have to be signed.”
Her hands twisted harder in her lap. She shook her head, tears gathering.
“Two houses are already demanding renegotiations directly with me. I don’t—I don’t understand the terms. I can’t—” Her voice broke sharp.
My chest burned. Luca hadn’t moved.
“Before he died… Alaric Vale agreed to sign the Accord back into Adams hands. But now he’s gone, and Alexander—” Her breath hitched.
“Alexander is furious. And instead of… instead of facing it, instead of fixing it—” Tears slipped, streaking her cheeks.
“…he left. He went to fix his marriage. He left me with it. With all of it.”
“And I—” Her stopped and shook her head.
My lungs clenched so tight it hurt.
Luca’s eyes cut toward me—sharp, unreadable, already running strategy. Alexander leaving now. The advisors circling. The dynasties pressing. He was calculating every angle.
Which we would need. But right now, wasn’t the time for strategy.
The migraines. The silences. Every time she rubbed her temple and said she was fine. Every night she turned away and told us nothing.
She’d been breaking under this weight. For months.
“I don’t want it,” she whispered. The words cut me in half. “I don’t want any of it.”
I moved before I knew it .
I bent down pulling her off the edge of the bed and into my chest. She came with no resistance, sobs breaking against me, face pressed to my shirt. My arms locked around her, crushing, my hand in her hair, my mouth at her ear.
“You don’t carry this alone,” I rasped, my lips brushing her hair. I kissed her temple, again, again, desperate. “Never again.”
“Breathe, baby. Just breathe.” Luca leaned in, his hand steady at her back, rubbing circles.
She sobbed harder, shaking. My chest ached with the sound, like every crack in her body was splitting me too.
I kissed her temple again. Her cheek. The tears off her jaw.
She shook in my arms, trembling so hard it made my throat ache. I held tighter, like my strength could keep her together.
And then, through the wreckage of her cries, the truth landed.
The Accord didn’t just belong to her.
It belonged to her husband.
Which meant… it belonged to us.
My chest pulled tight, so sudden I almost lost my breath.
This was it. The final piece. The last barrier between wanting her and binding her. With the Accord in her hands, dynasty law itself would bend. Damius would eager to approve the marriage.
The dynasty couldn’t refuse us now.
She thought she’d confessed a burden.
She didn’t know she’d just given us forever.
I pressed my forehead to hers, my breath ragged. My thumb traced her cheek, catching another tear.
She just gave us leverage.
“You’ll never carry this alone again,” I whispered, my lips brushing her temple .
She sobbed quietly, but softer now, her body folding into mine like she believed me.
Luca’s hand never left her back. His eyes stayed locked on me, unspoken truth passing between us. Strategy could come later.
I kissed her again—temple, hair, crown—each kiss a vow.
She’s ours. Always was. Always will be. And now blood and law will follow.
She thought she gave us a secret.
She didn’t know she’d just given us forever