Chapter 18
XVIII
EDEN
The room doesn’t just buzz—it crackles
It snaps like brittle glass beneath stilettos, sharp and sudden. The chandeliers above us flicker, casting prismatic shards of light across the marble floor.
It hits me first in the chest, like a punch beneath my ribs.
Then it’s burning my throat, coiling behind my eyes.
Lucian.
He didn’t just ruin my engagement party.
He ruptured it.
I stand there frozen, suspended in time like a snowflake on the edge of a roof. I feel Silas beside me, but the whole world is blurring before my eyes. My smile, thin and aching, lingers like that last breath you take before drowning—and I’m going under, quickly.
Count Wessex fumbles that mic back to his lips, stammering into the stunned silence in the crowd. Whispers and murmurs rip through the crowd, disbelief burning every tongue.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
Lucian’s voice loops in my mind—each word polished, deliberate, merciless.
He carved me right open.
I want to hide.
I want to scream.
I want to fold myself into something so tiny nobody will ever see me.
But I can’t.
I’m caught in the storm Lucian Augustine-Beaumont created. A storm draped in silk, a ghost reborn. The man who once held my heart in the palm of his hand crushed it with the same grace he used to kiss my thighs that night.
My hand trembles.
Silas’ grip hardens, forcing me back into reality.
“Smile, Eden,” Silas hisses, his breath sharp against my ear. “We’ll fix this.”
Something inside me tears.
I grab my hand back from him.
“What are you doing?” His face is red from embarrassment, the humiliation suffocating every bit of composure out of him. Sweat beads by his brow, a vein popping out.
It’s like scales have fallen from my eyes and I’m seeing him for the first time, and our relationship plays before me like a highlight reel—everything that’s happened from the moment I laid eyes on him on campus.
The realization starts with his voice. The way it wraps around my name like a leash. The way he says ours when he means mine. The way every promise he ever made sounds suddenly hollow, pre-scripted, designed to pacify, not protect.
Then it’s the way he touches me. Too tight. Too possessive. Like I’m something borrowed that he’s terrified to lose, not someone loved. I remember the bruises, the aches, the pains, the blood.
The way I apologized for him hurting me.
Lastly, his smile.
That perfect, princely smile that once made me feel chosen.
Now, I realize what a dangerous thing it is to be chosen by Silas Peregrine-Ashford IV.
I see it all.
Like smoke clearing after a fire.
And beneath the ashes—there he is. Not a savior. Not a suitor. Just a boy who thinks power is the same thing as love. Just a man who thinks if he cages something tightly enough, it won’t remember how to fly.
But I do.
God, I do.
So, I run.
His voice calls after me—stern, commanding—but I break through the crowd like a flame blazing through dry brush. My vision is blurry, faces twist into masks, voices melt together. A camera flash blinds me for a heartbeat.
Someone calls my name, but it’s muffled, distant.
All I can hear is the cacophony in my head.
A thousand voices screaming over each other—mine, my mother’s, Lucian’s, Silas’. The past, the future, the deafening now. It’s all wrong. Every moment, every breath, every decision I ever mistook for mine. It’s all unraveling like a thread pulled too tight.
I burst through doors into the cold.
The air hits like a slap. It tastes metallic, city-gritty. London sprawls before me—black cabs, neon windows, the glow of old street lamps. A world still spinning while mine collapses.
I run harder.
Silas’ shoes thunder behind me—I know the sound of them by heart, seared into my mind by fear. “Eden!”
No.
No.
Tears stream my cheeks. My Louboutins catch in a crack. My ankle nearly rolls. I kick them off, letting them clatter against the cobblestone like broken promises. I keep running, barefoot, the pavement biting into my soles.
I want to disappear.
Be smoke. Be wind. Be gone.
But he catches me.
Fingers clamp around my wrist, jerking me back so I crash into him. The breath is knocked from my lungs. I’m heaving, my face wet, the world spinning. When Silas’ face comes into view, he looks like a stranger.
“Are you insane?” he hisses, wild-eyed. “You’re humiliating us!”
“Let me go!” I scream.
I shove him with every ounce of strength I can find, but his fingers dig deeper. I feel bruises blooming under his touch, old ones resurfaces, new ones being made.
“You think you can run from me? From this?”
“Get off me!” I scream. “You lying scoundrel! I hate you and I never want to see you again in my entire life!” I drive the heel of my foot into his shoe with everything I have. He roars, pain slicing through him just enough for him to let him go.
I break free and keep running.
Silas lunges again, and I spin around, chest heaving, hair falling from its pins. My hand trembles, my eyes falling to my ring. The diamond catching a glint of streetlight. A bauble soaked in lies and betrayal.
Diamonds taken from his mother’s collection.
I yank it off, and even though my finger screams it feels good.
“I’m not fucking marrying you!” The words fly out of me and I’m surprised by my own words, but I don’t let it stop me. All the fire that’s been stopped up in my heart, my throat. It comes out of me in a rush. “Leave me alone!”
I hurl the ring.
It bounces once, twice, and then vanishes between the stones.
Silas’ face hardens, then he smiles. That cruel, cold smile that once made me feel chosen. Now, it curdles my stomach. “Go search for the ring,” I spit. “You need every dollar it’s worth.”
“You were never going to leave me, Eden,” his voice comes off so smooth, so sure. “I own you.”
My heart turns to ice.
We’re an arm’s length apart.
I’m about to start running again, when there’s movement.
My mother appears behind him, a few feet away. She stands on the street, untouched by the chaos. A statue in couture and diamonds. Her eyes sweep over the entire scene with clinical detachment.
No emotion, just disgust.
She doesn’t speak—but I can hear exactly what’s going through her mind.
That look says it all, and my heart twists and my stomach turns.
My vision starts to blur even more, tears rolling down my face, dripping from my chin.
But just when I feel defeated, caught between a rock and a hard place, another voice cuts through the tense chaos.
My father.
“Eden?” He approaches.
My father has always been a formidable man, but right now he seems ten feet tall.
His frame is backlit by the streetlamps, his dark hair and dark eyes, the well-tailored suit—and in that moment I realize how much we resemble each other.
He walks between Silas and my mother, not glancing at either of them.
Just quiet, steady, intent.
He reaches for me. “Come with me.”
I go with him.
His hand closes around mine—not forceful, not pleading. Just certain. It’s warm, calming, even. In the middle of the chaos, he’s a steadying force. He walks me to a waiting car. The door opens like an escape hatch.
I don’t look back.
Let them find the ring.
Let them chase the headlines and do damage control, that’s all they ever think about anyway. How everything looks. My mother seemed to like Silas more than me.
All I know, they’ve both lost me.
The door shuts with a quiet finality.
Silence folds around us in the back of the car. The city flickers past the windows, distant and golden. The soles of my feet sting, my throat burns, my hands tremble in my lap. I’m shaking like a leaf, my face wet, makeup smeared all over my face.
My father rolls up the privacy screen.
I’m a mess.
But he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he reaches into his coat and produces a handkerchief—plain, white, pressed.
I stare at his outstretched hand holding it.
Then I take it.
I stare out the window, wiping at the last of my tears with the edge of his handkerchief. I don’t feel real. The city passes in a blur—neon, fog, night. My makeup stains the cloth.
“Was it just tonight?” My father asks suddenly, voice low, controlled.
I flinch. My throat tightens.
“What are you talking about?” My throat tightens.
He sighs, heavy and charged. That’s when I pick up his mood—things are tense in here too, like the moment before a thunderstorm cracks the sky in half.
“You know what I mean, Eden,” I feel his eyes on the side of me. “I saw the way he held you, how he spoke to you.” A pause. “The bruises that you’ve covered.”
I flinch. “No,” I whisper.
I don’t expect the way his knuckles whiten as he grips the center console. My father is not a man prone to anger—he’s the exact opposite of my mother. He’s measured, composed, the kind of man who keeps his wrath in a vault.
But there’s a crack now.
A dangerous crack.
“Tell me, Eden.”
I squeeze the handkerchief until it’s a tight knot in my palm.
“It started a few days into our relationship,” I admit.
“He…it started so small. A grip that was too tight, a word that was too harsh. I explained the bruises away before he even had to. And when it got hard for me to make sense of things, I let him twist things until I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. ”
His jaw clenches.
That’s the most succinct way to put it.
The real story would be too long—and would make me look even more stupid. This is my first time admitting any of this out loud and it feels like an out of body experience, but in the opposite way. Like my spirit is finally snapping back into my body.
And none of it makes sense.
How did I allow this to happen to me?
“And Evelyn knew?”
I suck in a breath. “She said it could be fixed with time.”
There’s a silence so sharp it slices between us, then he turns to me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice breaks on the last word.
That undoes me.
The tears start streaming again.