Page 31 of Iron Roses

She laughed. “I’m a cradle Catholic, Cassian. Those rites mean nothing. They only have power if you believe in them.”

She reached for my hands. I let her touch them.

Not out of agreement. Out of morbid curiosity. What did it feel like, to be a woman trying to sell off her stepdaughter to protect her own blood?

I watched her hands curl over mine. Her nails were painted pale—chipped at the edges. The skin around her knuckles cracked. She gripped like a woman used to grasping for things already gone.

“Save her,” she whispered. “Save Giovanna. Marry her. The rest will be forgotten.”

I pulled back.

Her eyes flickered. She’d known, even before asking, that I would say no. But she’d asked anyway. Because what else could she do?

I left her there. And when I stepped into the corridor—there she was.

Giovanna.

Light spilled in from the stained-glass landing window behind her. Reds and golds painted her shoulders. Her hair caught the sun like spun bronze, loose now, tumbling over her collarbones. A curl clung to her mouth like it belonged there.

God, she was beautiful.

Ethereal.

Like she belonged to another time. Another realm. Too still for this world, too aware to leave it.

She had a ribbon in one hand. A pale blue one. Frayed.

Her voice was low when she spoke.

“Let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s get married.”

She’d heard. Of course she had.

I stepped forward, close enough to see the crack in her armor—the faint tremble in her lower lip, the way her free hand curled in on itself like she was hiding a wound.

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” she said, too quickly.

I reach for the bridge of my nose now, fingers pressing against my temple as the ache resurfaces—years old, never dulled.

Behind me, Elaria shifts again in the sheets. A quiet, broken sound escapes her throat.

And just like that—

I’m back in the room. Back in the now. With her.

She shifts again—barely—and the sheet rustles with her breath. My eyes drag over her face, still pale from whatever she saw, from wherever she went.

Standing, I hover above her, gaze cold as stone.

Does she even know?

How much has been sacrificed for her?

The passage was sealed. But she found it.

My jaw ticks.

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