Chapter 21
NIK
A glass shattered. Someone screamed. They all gossiped.
Rebels were among them.
They would strike again.
In one act of desperation from Elara, Nik’s whole plan came crashing down.
Corinne Rousseau loomed over her daughter like a specter, her presence dark and horrifying.
She was nothing like the woman Elara described during their late-night baking sessions.
This was a nightmare ripped from deep within Elara’s own mind.
And it perfectly reflected what the audience thought of the rebels, what Nik had—no—still believed about them.
“I thought you wanted the world to remember me.” Corinne Rousseau’s voice echoed from every mirror.
“I do,” Elara’s quieter voice replied.
She’d managed to stand and face her mother, who was glaring at the name upon her coat.
“Auclair.” She tilted her chin. “You tried to forget me.”
“I did.” Elara rubbed her hand, which was a dangerous shade of red, the skin patchy and melted. Another scar she would add to her collection from this contest.
“You wanted me dead.”
“Never,” she snapped fiercely.
“Then why haven’t you fought for me? For all of us?”
Elara’s shoulders drooped, and Nik had the urge to be there to lift her chin and give her the smallest amount of comfort she’d offered him these last weeks.
“You pathetic girl.” Corinne motioned to the wreckage of Elara’s station. “I gave you this gift, and you threw it away. Why? Because you’re a selfish child, a coward who’s no better than the rest of these fools. You take what you can, even if it means robbing others.”
Despite his hatred, he knew this wasn’t the real Corinne, who’d always been kind to her neighbors. The chef who handed out her practice pastries to children in the evenings. The woman who had fiercely defended her people. She was reckless. Not a monster.
These were Elara’s thoughts.
A sharp pain in his foot ripped Nik back to the reality unfolding below him.
And to Lafontaine pressing the heel of his polished boot onto Nik’s toes with crushing force.
“Outside. Now.”
Every instinct screamed for him to run, beg, or cajole until his father relented.
But he was Elara’s Patron, and she needed him.
He straightened his shoulders and faced his father.
“Souverain, I can explain.”
Lafontaine struck faster than he could dodge. Nik’s skull cracked into the wall hard enough to blur his vision and rattle his teeth. A grade-one concussion at least.
“You weakhearted fool,” Lafontaine snarled. “Were you swayed by a pretty face or just too stupid to realize the viper you’d invited in?”
His brain struggled to right itself from the impact.
“SPEAK!”
“I thought we could use her,” he slurred.
“Then you knew who she was!” Lafontaine shoved him against the wall, fingers digging like claws into his chin and cheeks.
“She’s not a rebel, but I thought she might be working with them.”
“And?”
His mouth dried. Elara was the daughter of a rebel like he was the son of a Souverain. It didn’t mean they were their parents or their parents’ mistakes.
“So,” Lafontaine seethed, “you harbored the spawn of the very creature who murdered your mother.”
The truth slammed into Nik’s bones like cement.
“You hid her from me,” Lafontaine said.
“Because I wanted to prove myself to you,” Nik replied quickly.
“By raising vermin into a position of power?”
“Only so you could use her.” He swallowed a knot. “I wanted…”
But the things he’d wanted felt as if they belonged to another person. Elara was also lost, stumbling through the wreckage their mothers had left behind. Tonight, he should’ve been overjoyed to see her suffer.
He only felt numb.
“What if…” Nik took a deep breath. “What if she’s the answer? Elara Rousseau, not Elouise Auclair.” The words came rushing out. “She could be a bridge between the Counseil and the Restes, a way to make reparations. Father, think of—”
Another strike sent Nik careening hard enough that he lost all sense of direction. The world continued to spin as he pushed himself from the floor. Blood trickled warm and sticky down his chin, staining his best suit.
“I knew you couldn’t be trusted.” His father adjusted his collar. “You’re both Restes filth. Born and bred.”
Nik’s thoughts took too long to catch up. The world was sluggish and hazy, Lafontaine’s words barely making sense as he flipped his coat and headed to the door.
“Once again, I will fix your mess.” Lafontaine stepped over him. “Go home.”
“Father.” Nik reached up.
He smacked his hand. “You are no son of mine.”
With that he slammed the door behind him.
The hallway was vast, the marble cold beneath his body. For a moment, he let his heated face rest against the cold marble like a beaten dog.
Nik’s mother had been a Reste, and his father had loved her. Why was Nik so different?
Maybe he was a reminder of Lafontaine’s mistake in loving such filth.
He tried, desperately, to see Elara as his father did. Tried to imagine handing her over to the Counseil, and all of Lafontaine’s demands for the future of the Restes.
He couldn’t.
There was a gaping hole in his chest, and she’d filled it with something warm and crackling the night they’d shared cake. No. Long before that. The night of the Exposé, when she’d looked up at him as if she’d found a kindred spirit.
Whatever he felt for her, there was no way he could see her destroyed by his father’s schemes.
He was still a terrified boy, but he had something—someone—worth fighting for.
Elara was scared too, maybe of the same things.
If he wanted to save her, he needed her to pick herself back up and keep going. To prove herself to the rest of the Counseil that she was exactly what the city needed.
In time, his father might see that too.
Nik dug deep, like exploratory surgery, until he found the last remnants of the infection Lafontaine had tried to remove from him. All the lessons, beatings, and apprenticeships to remake Nik into the perfect aristocratic pawn.
His father could teach him etiquette, dress him in linen, and shove a scalpel in his hand, but he couldn’t erase the original blueprint. Nik was a Reste.
He latched on to that rage, swept the blood from his face, and headed for the ballroom.