The Brooks Account
? Ivy ?
The clerk in the corridor begins writing before anyone else moves.
I want the truth recorded. I also want the corridor empty, my cheek unmarked, and my childhood returned to somewhere private. None of those wants fit together.
Sloane stands in front of me with her hand lowered at her side. My cheek burns where she struck me, and the open door behind her makes the whole thing impossible to soften into a private misunderstanding.
For most of my life, a room knew what to do when Sloane was upset. It softened around her before the tears came. It made excuses. It found the nearest person to blame, and that person was usually me.
Now she has hit me in front of witnesses, and there’s nowhere for the room to put the harm except where it belongs.
Rowan reaches the doorway first. He takes in my face, Sloane’s expression, Nora standing rigid beside me, and Roman in the waiting chamber beyond us. Roman hasn’t moved, but the stillness around him feels like a locked door with fire behind it.
“Lady Sloane,” Rowan says.
She gathers herself quickly. “Elder, I apologize. I was upset. It was a private family disagreement.”
Rowan turns to the guard. “Was the door open?”
“Yes, Elder.”
“Was Luna Maddox under council protection?”
“Yes, Elder.”
“Was Lady Sloane instructed not to touch her?”
The guard’s gaze flicks toward Sloane. “She was.”
Rowan looks back at her. “Then this was neither private nor simply family.” Sloane’s face drains.
For the first time in my life, the room doesn’t reshape itself to spare her.
I thought it’d feel triumphant.
It only feels heavy and overdue.
“Lady Sloane will be held separately until the review resumes,” Rowan says. “Her access to Luna Maddox is revoked.”
“You can’t confine me.”
“I can,” Rowan replies. “I’ve been remarkably patient about not doing so sooner.”
A guard steps toward her. Jace appears behind Sloane in the doorway to the adjoining chamber. He looks from her hand to my cheek, then back to her, and his expression shifts through too many things to name cleanly. Shock. Irritation. Calculation.
“Sloane,” he says.
She turns to him too quickly. “Jace, she was twisting everything. You heard what she said. She’s trying to ruin us.”
For once, I want him to listen. I don’t need him to defend me, but I want him to understand exactly what he chose when he chose the easier version of her.
“You hit her,” he says.
Fear breaks through Sloane’s face for one clear moment.
Wade appears behind Roman in the waiting-room doorway. “Enough. This is a family matter.”
“No,” I say.
Every face turns toward me. My cheek aches, but my hand is steady. “This is a witness under council supervision striking the Luna whose bloodline is part of a sealed inquiry.”
Holt has come up behind Roman without a sound. “That’s accurate.”
Dane folds his arms. “Unfortunate for her, but accurate.” Nora gives him a look.
“I’m helping,” he says.
Sloane’s mouth tightens. “You all believe her now?”
Jace’s expression closes. “This isn’t about belief.”
“Of course it is.” Her voice trembles at last. “It has always been about who you look at when everyone is watching.”
Jace says nothing as the guard takes her by the arm.
She doesn’t fight because fighting would make her look guilty in a way tears can’t repair. At the doorway, she looks back at me. The sweetness is gone. What remains is fear dressed in hate.
“You don’t know what you’re waking up.”
The words should sound like a warning, but they sound like a confession.
When the door closes behind her, the mark on my cheek keeps burning.
Nora steps in first because Nora has never feared burning herself on another person’s temper if there’s a wound to assess. She sets two fingers beneath my chin and turns my face toward the light.
“She has a decent arm for someone who thinks crying is a strategy,” she says.
Dane makes a strangled sound near the wall.
Despite the sting in my cheek, a laugh rises before I can stop it. It doesn’t fully escape, but Roman hears it. His eyes come to mine, and for a moment, his anger fractures around something softer.
“You’re hurt,” he says.
“I know.”
His gaze drops to the red mark. “I should’ve stopped her.”
“You didn’t know she was going to hit me.”
Nora releases my chin and reaches into her bag. “Cold cloth first. Salve later if it swells. Pride can remain untreated. That’s survived worse.”
“I’ve survived worse,” I say.
Roman’s expression darkens. Nora looks at me before he can. “That isn’t the same as saying this doesn’t matter.” I close my mouth.
She’s right, which is irritating enough that I don’t thank her.
Roman draws a breath, measured and slow. “What do you want?”
The question changes the room more than shouting would have.
Wade shifts beside the window. Marissa’s hands tighten in her lap. Jace remains near the open doorway to the adjoining chamber, his attention resting on me in a way it hasn’t before. I can feel the shape of it like a draft beneath a closed door.
A younger version of me would’ve rushed to say it was fine. She would’ve apologized for making Sloane upset enough to slap her. She would’ve touched her burning cheek in private and reminded herself that visible marks fade.
I look at Roman, then at Rowan, who waits near the doorway with his hands folded and his face set in council severity.
“I want it recorded,” I say.
Rowan nods to the clerk, who has already lifted his pen.
“I want Lady Sloane held where she can’t turn this into a story before the review resumes.”
“She’ll remain under guard,” Rowan says.
“Record that she struck me after the Vance file was sealed.”
The clerk’s pen pauses, then begins moving faster.
Marissa makes a small sound. “Ivy.”
I don’t look at her yet.
“I want my mother’s name found.”
The wanting catches in my throat. I want her name so badly that it hurts.
Rowan’s voice softens, though not enough to become pity. “The council will continue the record search.”
“I don’t want the council to continue because the bloodline question matters to the vow,” I say. “I want it recorded that Luna Ivy Maddox has formally requested recovery of her mother’s name.”
Roman’s attention warms beside me. Rowan studies me for a long moment. “That’ll be entered.”
“Thank you.”
I look toward the archive door. “And ask why Grant looked afraid of the name.”
The pen stops this time, but only for a breath. Then the clerk writes.
Dane’s gaze flicks toward Rowan, and Holt’s mouth tightens as if he’s trying not to show approval in a room where approval can become evidence.
Rowan doesn’t smile. “That’ll be entered as a formal statement of concern.”
Wade pushes away from the window. “This has gone far enough.”
There’s the voice I know. Heavy, controlled, and tired of being contradicted by someone he still believes should lower her eyes when he speaks.
I turn to him, and he stops before I say a word.
“No,” I say. “It’s only now beginning to go where it should’ve gone twenty-two years ago.”
His face goes gray with anger. “You’re embarrassing yourself.” I think that should hurt.
Maybe it does, but the pain is old and shallow now, scraped too many times to bleed fresh.
“I was embarrassed in the Moon Chamber,” I say. “This is something else.”
Marissa closes her eyes. Wade’s jaw tightens. “You don’t understand what you’re stirring up.”
“That seems to be the family refrain today.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
The words are familiar enough that I almost hear them in Marissa’s voice too.
Protection has been the Brooks family’s favorite name for obedience.
Protection meant silence at dinner. Protection meant smiling beside Sloane.
Protection meant accepting Jace’s distance because a prince’s attention was delicate and my feelings weren’t.
Protection meant the white dress they sent back to me.
I touch the edge of the table because I want something solid beneath my fingers. “No. You’re trying to protect whatever you knew enough to fear.” Wade’s eyes flash. “Careful.” Roman moves half a step.
I lift one hand without looking at him. He stops.
The room sees that. I hope they do. I hope they all see that Roman Maddox, cursed Alpha of the North, stops because I ask him to.
Wade sees it too, and the anger in his face changes. It becomes something uglier because he understands the command didn’t come from him.
I lower my hand. “Don’t use that word with me again.”
“Which word?”
“Careful.”
His mouth shuts. Marissa looks up then, and there’s something raw in her face I don’t know how to receive. She has spent so many years sharpened into disapproval that seeing her frightened feels like seeing a knife forget its edge.
“I didn’t know about the payments,” she says.
“I believe you.”
Relief starts to rise in her eyes.
I can’t let her mistake belief for absolution.
“I believe you didn’t know about the payments,” I say. “I believe you didn’t know why the records were damaged. I believe you didn’t know the name Vance meant something to the king.”
Her breath catches.
“But you knew I was a child with missing pieces, and you still raised me as if the missing parts were my fault.”
Marissa presses a hand to her mouth. Wade says, “Enough.”
“No.” The word comes easier. “You taught me to be grateful and quiet. Every kindness had a debt.”
Marissa’s eyes shine. I’m not sure whether they’re tears.
I’m not sure whether I care.
“You housed me,” I say. “You didn’t protect me.”
Silence follows. It isn’t the silence from the Moon Chamber. That silence was hungry. This one is bruised and smaller, full of people deciding how much truth they can survive admitting.
Roman remains beside me, and the bond is warm now, steady enough that my knees remember they’re mine.
Nora stands at my other side with the cold cloth in hand, but she hasn’t pressed it to my cheek yet because she knows this isn’t the wound I’m treating.
Dane watches the doorway. Holt watches the papers. Rowan watches everything.
That’s when I understand the shape of it.
Blood family, legal family, and chosen family aren’t clean words. Blood can be hidden. Legal family can be used as a cage. Chosen family can become dangerous if choice stops being checked and turns into assumption.
But the people standing closest to me are leaving space for my voice to reach the floor before theirs does.
Maybe that’s what family should’ve been all along: not softness or even safety, because no one is safe in this palace, but room.
Nora lifts the cloth. “May I treat the injury now?”
A breath leaves me that’s almost a laugh. “Yes.”
She presses the cloth to my cheek.
I hiss before I can stop myself.
Roman’s hand flexes at his side.
Nora doesn’t look at him. “Roman, stop.”
Roman says nothing, but some of the heat in the room eases.
Jace hasn’t moved from the doorway. I wish I hadn’t noticed.
His gaze is no longer on Sloane’s closed door.
It’s on me, and there’s calculation beneath whatever concern he has arranged over his face.
I know that expression now because I’ve seen it on Grant, and I saw it on Sloane before her smile cracked.
It’s the look of someone watching a wound and wondering whether it can be used.
Jace looks at my marked cheek, then at the silver beneath my sleeve, then at Roman standing close without holding me.
Finally, he looks at my face.
A week ago, he looked at me as if I were an obligation someone had polished and placed in his path. At the altar, he looked at me as if refusing me would free him. In the courtyard, he looked at me as if I’d become a problem.
Now he looks at me with interest rather than love or regret.
It makes my skin want to crawl.
Roman feels the shift through me before I can name it. His gaze cuts to Jace, and the bond cools around the edges. I don’t step behind him.
I step forward, just enough that Jace has to look at me without Roman becoming the wall between us.
Jace’s mouth parts as if he might speak.
Rowan does it first. “Prince Jace, you were instructed to remain available under supervision, not to linger in thresholds.”
Jace’s attention flicks toward him. “I was concerned.”
“No,” I say.
Jace looks back at me. I keep the cold cloth against my cheek. “You were watching.”
“Ivy,” he says, softening my name into something he hasn’t earned the right to use.
Roman’s posture locks. I don’t look at him. I don’t need to.
“Luna Maddox,” I say.
Jace’s expression tightens, then smooths again. “Of course.”
As if he didn’t forget that title the moment it became inconvenient. As if courtesy can erase the shape of his gaze.
Rowan nods to the guard. “Escort the prince back to the adjoining chamber.”
Jace doesn’t argue. He steps back, but his eyes remain on me until the guard moves between us.
When the door closes, the room feels different. It isn’t safer, but it’s clearer.
“What happens when the recess ends?” I ask.
Rowan follows my gaze to the marked pages. “Then the review continues.”
“No,” Holt says quietly.
Everyone looks at him. His eyes are on the records, but his voice is aimed at the whole room. “The review ended when the arch found no coercion. What continues now is something else.” Rowan doesn’t correct him.
Nora lowers the cloth from my cheek and checks the swelling. “And what would you call it?”
“An inquiry,” Holt says. “Into who needed Luna Ivy Maddox unnamed badly enough to rewrite a life.”
This time, I don’t mind. Somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the burn in my cheek, beneath my missing mother’s name and the sealed Vance file, something inside me answers that sentence with a steadiness I’ve never known before.
I’m tired of being unnamed.
When the next door opens, I intend to make someone say why.