Chapter 14 The Blackwood Trinity
The private elevator ascends through Eclipsera’s spine, a gilded sarcophagus trapping me with the city’s finest vultures.
Diamond-crusted rubies wink from throats and wrists, each pulse of magic worth more than most families will see in a lifetime.
The air reeks of imported perfume and generational entitlement.
Madam Rothschild’s crimson talons tap her clutch in calculated rhythm, while Judge Wei’s third wife this decade tracks my reflection with disdain as her husband fumbles with his tie.
Let them gawk and speculate. There are no parents left to disappoint, no reputation to guard but my own. Luna’s parting words still claw beneath my skin, acidic and unresolved, but I force my expression into a smile—sharp, immaculate, utterly insincere.
I want to feel guilty. Some small, useless part of me does.
But the rest—the louder, meaner instinct—wants to scream.
She says I never noticed her, that I left her behind.
But does she remember what it was like for me?
I had curfews enforced while she slipped out to parties, lectures and punishment spells for speaking out of turn while she wept over boys I wasn’t even allowed to look at.
She had birthday sleepovers, Academy excursions, freedom.
I had none of it. While she played, I trained. While she dreamed, I bled.
And still, I’m cast as the villain. Branded selfish. The sister who turned her back.
I love her. I do. But Luna’s always rewritten the narrative to cast herself as the collateral. And I’m done dragging her blame alongside mine.
“Darling Aria.” Ophelia Thorn’s voice drips honey-coated arsenic as she touches my arm, fingers weighted by centuries of inherited rings.
“That gown is divine. Madam Laurent, isn’t it?
I’d recognize those seam enchantments anywhere.
” Her smile widens, lacquered and sympathetic.
“We’ve missed you dreadfully at the Foundation galas.
Of course, after such a devastating loss . . .”
“Yes, grief does tend to declutter the calendar,” I reply smoothly, watching the cracks form in her smile. “But I’m sure the Foundation’s donations have flourished in my parents’ absence.”
The temperature in the elevator drops several degrees.
Judge Wei studies his cufflinks as if they’ve offered new revelations, while his wife reapplies her lipstick with the urgency of escape.
But I was raised in this pit of glass and teeth, bred to turn scrutiny into armor, to hold a room in the palm of my bleeding hand.
The Sky Lounge sprawls above Crown Heights.
A sanctum of arrogance, where the city’s most powerful gather to spin their webs of influence.
Enchanted violins play themselves across suspended stages of light, harmonizing with the clink of glassware, and murmured transactions that will redraw political borders by morning.
During the day, the lounge hosts Eclipsera’s elite, as they broker deals that shape the city’s future—Vale pharmaceutical contracts signed over cocktails, Darkmoor security agreements sealed with handshakes worth millions.
But nights like this are for spectacle. This is when Crown Heights’ finest come to see and be seen, to trade secrets and forge alliances between courses of gilt-dusted delicacies and obscenely priced wines.
I recognize the faces. Alumni of my parents’ research summits, and bidders from masked charity auctions, where the wealthy pretended philanthropy wasn’t just another game of power.
My heels click against floors that have witnessed generations of calculated moves and betrayals.
Each step draws sideways glances and hastily redirected gazes, the vipers pretending they aren’t dissecting my every detail, parsing the meaning behind my return.
Madam Laurent’s burgundy gown is doing its job.
Twenty-five thousand lumes disappeared from my LumeLedger account in the blink of a crimson light when I bought the dress, the transaction flagged with a chirpy reminder: “Equivalent to three months’ rent in Everreach.
” As if I needed the banking system’s judgment along with everyone else’s.
But here in Crown Heights, where even the public Vault Orbs are plated in gold, lumes are just pretty lights in magical accounts. The real wealth hangs at throats and wrists, pulsing with stored magic that means never having to bleed for power.
After all, anyone can earn lumes. Even the cleaning staff wear timekeeper bracelets pulsing with weekly credits, each shift logged with a mandatory blood prick. The system is universal, efficient, and soulless. A thousand might buy comfort, maybe even a sliver of safety, but not power.
That belongs to the blood rubies.
They aren’t currency—they’re legacy. Worn flush against the skin, and pulsing with essence and blood-bound lineage, each one serves as both conduit and declaration. One marks you as seen. Two mean your family has roots. More than three, and suddenly you’re someone worth mentioning.
I remember trembling as Mom clasped the first one onto my wrist. The wonder of it. The gravity. By eighteen, when they arrived with the same predictable regularity as Alexander’s meticulously selected birthday gifts, that awe had dulled to obligation.
The middle class from Everreach obsess over them—covet them like designer bags, flaunt them in social feeds and dinner parties, even if most are minor-grade, and prone to flickering out mid-spell.
It’s never about function. It’s about the illusion.
Owning a ruby means your magic belongs to you. Needing to earn one means it never did.
The upper class from the Aureum Quarter and the elite parade them.
Their rubies are ancient, passed down through rings and heirlooms, forged into brooches, even fused to bone.
Wealth that means you never have to check your balance in public.
A legacy where your blood is the password.
Though lately, watching women like Madam Rothschild practically dripping with every ruby she owns, I wonder if they’ve forgotten that true power doesn’t need to announce itself quite so desperately.
I was sculpted for this arena. Etiquette tutors, Foundation galas, forced smiles at endless dinners. Each one a chisel stroke. The spotlight isn’t a choice. It’s coded into my bones; branded into my blood by parents who understood that in Eclipsera, being seen is its own kind of power.
But then I see him, and everything else fades, reduced to static beneath the sudden drumbeat of my pulse.
Dominic Blackwood commands the bar with the swagger of a fallen angel who found heaven dull and came back to burn it down.
Six-foot-two, and carved from shadow and violence, he wears sin as if it were tailored.
Lean, not bulky, every inch of him promises speed and precision over brute force.
A body honed in back-alley brawls and bloodsport, not some sanitized gym.
His shoulders slope with the elegance of a dancer, but there’s nothing delicate about him.
He looks built to throw a punch, and fuck you breathless, without missing a beat.
“My love.” His voice is old whiskey and quiet ruin. “You’re making it incredibly difficult to remember why I agreed to dinner first.”
His fingers skim the curve of my spine, sparking heat with every casual, possessive touch. He guides me toward his favorite alcove, where the enchanted sunset spills molten gold across velvet cushions and wine-dark marble.
“Though perhaps that was your plan all along.” His lips brush my ear. “You always did enjoy making me suffer.”
I turn my head enough to meet his eyes, letting him see the wicked smile that curves my lips. “And you always did enjoy being punished.”
I sink into the aurora-kissed velvet chair, the cushions molding to me. Dom folds himself beside me in a slow sprawl. Three days since the gala, and somehow just sitting next to him makes it easier to breathe.
He brushes the inside of my wrist—not possessive, just grounding—and the knot in my chest loosens further. The server doesn’t even get the menus fully on the table before the words tumble out of me.
“Luna and I fought,” I say quietly. “About the journal.”
Dom stills, every line of his body tightening. His gaze flicks past me, scanning the room. “You told her?”
“I didn’t plan to,” I admit. “But we talked, actually bonded for the first time in years, and then it just . . . slipped out. I think she might tell Alexander.”
His hand twitches on the table. Then he shakes his head and leans in slightly, voice low. “Not here.”
“What—”
“Not here, Aria.” Dom is already watching the room again. “Too many mouths. Too many eyes.”
I follow his line of sight.
Two servers fold napkins with mechanical speed no normal worker maintains, one of them lingering by our table long enough to raise suspicion.
A man in a tailored blue blazer laughs too loudly, theatrically tapping something on the inside of his cufflink.
Overhead, a floating orb—shaped like a decorative lantern—blinks once. Then again.
The Sky Lounge might be a Blackwood establishment, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe.
If anything, it makes the surveillance more insidious.
Crystal chandeliers might hide recording spells.
Mirrors become eyes that never blink. Even the floating candles flicker with too much intent, casting shadows that follow movement too perfectly.
“This place is wired?” I ask under my breath.
Dom doesn’t answer. Just reaches for his glass with deliberate nonchalance.
That’s when I catch it. The slight misstep in his motion, the hitch in his shoulder.
The silk of his collar shifts, revealing the edge of something darker.
A bruise blooms below his jaw, violet and green, and slick as an oil stain bleeding through skin.
Not fresh, but not healed either. Pain delivered with purpose.