Chapter 44
Forty Four
Aria
The silence on the other end of the line is a chasm of unspoken history. For a moment, I think she has hung up.
“Aria?” My aunt’s voice is a ghost from another life. “My god. Where are you? Are you safe?”
The question is a luxury I can’t afford. “I don’t have time for safe, Aunt Sarah. I need answers. I know who my mother married.”
Another silence, this one heavy with a weary, bitter understanding. “I was afraid of this.”
“Why would she do it?” I ask, my voice cracking. “How could she marry the father of the boy who…” I can’t finish the sentence. The words are poison.
“Because that is what your mother does,” Sarah says, her voice devoid of sympathy.
It is the cold, hard diagnosis of a doctor delivering a terminal prognosis.
“Caroline does not love people; she acquires them. She saw a vacant throne next to a powerful man, and she sat in it. My sister did not mourn your sister, Aria. She leveraged her. The tragedy made her interesting to a man who was bored with the world.”
The words are brutal, but they are true. They resonate with the cold, ambitious woman who had always been a stranger to me. But it’s still not enough. It doesn’t explain the speed, the sheer monstrosity of it.
“There’s more,” I press, sensing it. “It’s not just that.”
My aunt sighs, a sound of old, buried grief.
“They knew each other. Years ago, before your father.
It was brief, a footnote. But when the crash happened…
he was the first person she called. Not me.
Not you. The marriage wasn't a comfort found in shared grief. It was an old claim being staked. She waited decades for that kingdom to have a vacancy.”
A kingdom. The word hangs in the air. A kingdom built on the ashes of her children.
A cold, diamond-hard resolve forms in my chest. I can’t dismantle this from the outside. I can’t fight shadows with whispers. You don’t reason with monsters. You walk into their lair and you learn their secrets.
“I have to see her,” I say, the words tasting like metal.
“Aria, no,” Sarah pleads, her voice suddenly sharp with fear. “You don’t understand what you’re walking into. That house isn’t a home. It’s a tomb with a beautiful view. A man like Dimitri Kostas doesn’t have a family; he has a court. And your mother just won the crown. They will devour you.”
“I need a reason to get past the gates,” I say, my voice flat, ignoring her warning. “A reason she can’t refuse.”
I hear her take a shaky breath. She knows she can’t stop me.
“When she left, she took everything. Including your grandmother’s jewelry.
There was a silver locket, oval-shaped, with a rose etched on the front.
It has your baby picture and one of Jade’s.
It was yours. She can’t deny you the right to claim it. ”
The locket. A piece of my past, a key to my future. A perfect excuse, a righteous claim.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Aria, be careful,” she says, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Remember who you are.”
I hang up the phone. Remember who you are. The advice is twenty years too late. I look at my reflection in the dark screen of the phone. A stranger stares back.
I am the daughter of a queen of ashes. I am the stepdaughter of a monster. I am the obsession of a man who collects ghosts.
I’m no longer the girl who ran from the car crash. I’m the woman who is walking back into the fire.
I pick up the wooden box from the bed. It is my burden and my blade. Cassian thinks I am a ghost, hiding somewhere in his city, clutching my stolen treasures. He is waiting for me to make a mistake. He is waiting for me to run.
He’s looking in the wrong direction.
The wraith doesn’t run from the fire. She walks through it. It’s time to go home.