Epilogue
Alison Ward was terrifying.
“Cassian, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” Cassian said, which was mostly true if you defined listening as holding the mobile against his ear while the woman on the other end delivered a monologue so dense with legal terminology that entire sentences passed through him without leaving a mark in his memory.
“The critical point,” Alison said, “is that you were never really married at all. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Cassian?”
Cassian did not understand what she was telling him, and said so.
“It means we’re not ending a marriage. We’re proving there was never one to end.
You were twenty-one years old. You had never met the man.
You had no independent legal advice, no notion that refusing was even an option, and you were handed to him by an organisation that had spent your whole life teaching you that saying no to an alpha was a sin.
” Something on Alison’s end made a sharp, percussive sound that might have been her palm hitting a desk.
“That is not consent, Cassian. And a marriage without real consent is not a marriage. It’s void.
In the eyes of the law, it never happened. ”
He couldn’t find anything to say to that, and so stayed quiet.
“This brings me to my favourite part,” Alison went on.
“Nine days after the ceremony, Townsend signed a ‘donation’ over to the Family’s foundation and transferred forty acres of land into their name.
He put it in writing. He has, in his own paperwork, documented that he didn’t take a husband.
He made a purchase. And here is the truly remarkable thing.
Getting an annulment doesn’t mean you walk away with nothing, Cassian.
We’re going to get you what you’re owed, more than enough to support you for the rest of your life. ”
Cassian sat on the bottom step of the staircase at the Ledbury Road house with his trainers already on, one lace tied and the other trailing across the hallway floor.
Yes, this was all very important, but he needed to leave.
He had needed to leave since the twenty-minute mark, when Alison had said “one more thing” for the fourth time, and his brain had told him to say I have to go now, Alison.
But he’d kept his mouth shut, because he was scared of her.
“I’ll need the marriage certificate,” Alison continued, “and any documentation relating to property acquired during the marriage. If any of that was purchased after the ceremony, it forms part of the marital estate, and given the absence of a valid prenuptial agreement—”
“Alison,” Cassian said. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”
“Right,” Alison said, and to her credit, she sounded more amused than offended. “We’ll pick this up Thursday, then. I need you to try to source a copy of your marriage certificate.”
“I will, Alison.” He had no idea how to do that. He’d have to ask Hamish, who knew most things, except how to properly load a dishwasher, according to Lysander.
He ended the call and shoved the mobile into his back pocket, grabbed the banister with both hands, and hauled himself upright. The untied lace caught under his heel as he lunged for the front door, and he stumbled into the hallway table hard enough to rattle the bowl of keys on its surface.
Lysander was coming down the stairs with a stack of printouts fanned across both arms, leafing through the pages. He looked up at the sound of the table legs scraping the floorboards, and Cassian’s shoulder caught him square in the chest.
The printouts went everywhere. They scattered across the hallway in a burst of estate agent photography and floor plans, glossy pages spinning over the tiles and sliding beneath the radiator.
“Cassian!” Lysander dropped to a crouch, snatching at the nearest page. “I had those arranged in order of viewings, you absolute—”
“Sorry! Sorry, Sander, I’m late, I’m so late—” Cassian was already through the door, one shoe still untied, shooting the apology over his shoulder as he clattered down the front steps and hit the pavement at a run.
Proving Ground’s door hit the wall and set the chalk menu swinging.
“I’m here, I’m here!” Cassian announced, to the café at large and to nobody in particular, because the only person who needed to hear it was already looking at him from behind the counter.
Ruari’s gaze dropped to Cassian’s feet. One trainer was laced.
“You’re late,” Ruari said.
“I know.” Cassian bent double in the doorway and attacked the trailing lace, his fingers fumbling the loops into a tie that should hold.
“I was on the phone with my solicitor, and she’s really scary, Ruari, she’s so scary.
She talks for forty-five minutes without breathing and I can’t interrupt her because she once absolutely destroyed a former Aussie prime minister that was the ex of her client.
Hamish told me that, he looked her up, and she’s handling my case, which is actually happening now, by the way.
” He straightened up, flushed and beaming. “I’m getting an annulment, Ruari!”
A woman at the nearest table looked up from her flat white.
“Finally!” Cassian continued, at a volume calibrated for a stadium rather than a bakery.
“Diwa says I’ve got an absolute viper of a lawyer, which I think he means as a good thing, and he says I’ll get what I deserve out of my fucker of an ex-husband.
And Uriel got two years, because I gave evidence, and I only cried once. ”
Ruari wiped his hands on his apron. “Good,” he said.
Cassian waited for the rest of the sentence, but there weren’t any more words left in Ruari.
Instead Ruari turned towards the kitchen and bellowed, “Raf — cake!” with a force that sent Cassian’s shoulders up around his ears.
He was a proper regular at Proving Ground before he’d returned to Melbourne, and it was his first stop when he’d landed back in London two weeks ago with Hamish and Lysander, but the volume of Ruari’s shouting still got him every single time.
At least his flinch had shrunk from a full-body recoil to a sharp twitch that he recovered from before Ruari noticed.
Raf emerged from the back carrying a white cardboard box with both hands. He set it on the counter, lifted the lid, and stepped away. The cake was magnificent.
It had three layers of sponge, visible where the icing had been applied with deliberate imprecision so that the golden crumb showed through in stripes.
The buttercream peaked across the top in stiff, generous swirls, and the whole thing smelled so intensely of passionfruit that Cassian’s mouth flooded.
Colin had told him to choose the flavour.
He’d said, “You’re the cake expert, Cassian.
You can decide what to order,” and Cassian had said passionfruit without a second’s hesitation, because it was the best thing that had ever happened to him after Chelsea buns, pastéis de nata, and the moment Lysander had said you’re never going back there and meant it.
His head dipped towards the surface of the cake.
The peaks of buttercream were right there, close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of passionfruit seed suspended in the icing, and all he would have to do was stick his tongue out just a little bit, barely a lick at all, more of a gentle greeting between his tongue and the icing —
A large hand settled on the crown of his head and pushed, gently but firmly, until his face was a civilised distance from the cake.
Ruari didn’t say anything. He closed the box lid, slid it to the far end of the counter where Cassian couldn’t reach it without climbing, and turned back to the display case. His enormous hands moved through the trays, and emerged with a passionfruit tart on a square of waxed paper.
He held it out.
Cassian took it, bit into it, and the tartness hit the roof of his mouth so hard that his eyes watered. He grinned around the mouthful, grabbed the cake box off the counter before Ruari could stop him, and backed towards the door.
“Thank you, Ruari!” he called, already pushing the door open with his hip. “Remember to download Sander’s podcast and like and subscribe!”
The bell chimed above him. Portobello Road stretched out in both directions, bright with morning light and market stalls, and Cassian hugged the cake box against his chest and ran.
The Ledbury Road house was even louder than when he’d left it, which shouldn’t have been possible given that it contained two babies and seven adults.
He shouldered his way through the front door with the box held high above his head, because the hallway was an obstacle course of a disembowelled cardboard box trailing packing peanuts, and a subwoofer the size of a small suitcase that someone had abandoned mid-journey between the door and the living room.
“I’ve got the cake!” Cassian announced. “Nobody touch me, I’ve got the cake, and it’s perfect, and I nearly licked it but Ruari stopped me!”
The living room had been transformed. Diwa’s new sound system took up the entire far wall in a constellation of matte-black components that Cassian didn’t have names for, connected by cables that ran across the floor in tidy gaffer-taped channels.
Ryland was crouched behind the largest speaker with a spirit level resting on its top edge, adjusting something while Diwa leaned over his shoulder and pointed at an angle that required correction.
Both of them were wearing the expression that Stephen had explained to Cassian last week, after Cassian had asked why Ryland and Diwa looked like they were experiencing a religious event while talking through the set-up.
“It’s a nerdgasm, Cass,” Stephen had said wearily. “It’s what happens when two people who care too much about the technical specifications of things encounter a piece of equipment that meets their standards. You just leave them to it and check back in half a day.”