Chapter 31: Quiet Like Obedience

Christian Velloran.

Not the version who wore grief like perfume. Not the one who stopped pretending once the papers were signed. This Christian was earlier. Sharper. Still wrapped in charm and self-assurance, untouched by the violence he'd one day call necessity.

He looked exactly the same.

That was the worst part.

Christian glanced down as if to assess the moment for decorum. Then he smiled. Not wide. Just enough to suggest warmth. Authority. Ownership without saying the word.

"I wasn't sure how to approach," he said, conversational—like they were old friends meeting after a misunderstanding. "I didn't have the pleasure of meeting you."

Lucas nearly choked on the word pleasure.

He remembered the rooms Christian never entered without purpose. The way silence had felt like oxygen running out. The way "pleasure" had meant endurance. Compliance. A smile on command.

But none of it showed on his face now.

Lucas just stared. Still. Silent. Waiting for the weight to pass—but it didn't. It was standing in front of him, well-dressed and speaking gently, like a man introducing himself at a fundraiser.

Christian continued, easy as anything. "I've followed the changes to your status with interest. I must say, House D'Argente has done an excellent job presenting you. I almost didn't recognize you from the dossier."

Dossier.

Not portrait. Not photo. Not person.

Lucas felt it again—that ache beneath his skin. The instinct to run screaming, or hit something, or disappear.

"You look…" Christian's eyes scanned him once, briefly. "Striking."

Lucas didn't move. Didn't thank him.

Christian mistook the silence for nerves. Or shyness. Or some delicate bloom of affection waiting to be coaxed into full display.

"I know this is sudden," he said, shifting his tone slightly—lower, more intimate, his hand pressing harder on Lucas's waist. "But I'd like to offer you a private audience sometime this week. To speak plainly. You're of age now, and as your intended—"

"You're not," Lucas said flatly without thinking.

Christian blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're not my intended," Lucas said again, calmly. Coldly. "You were a name on a contract signed by a woman who no longer has the right to sell me."

Christian's smile thinned. "We should discuss this properly. Emotions can complicate—"

"I'm not emotional," Lucas said. "I'm clear."

A beat passed. One second too long.

Then Lucas stepped forward—not close, just enough to make his voice private.

"But since we're meeting for the first time, let me offer you the same courtesy you extended me."

He smiled.

It didn't reach his eyes.

"It wasn't a pleasure."

Lucas left, not looking back at the man's surprised face. 

The hall had blurred.

The carved walls, the polished glass, the soft scent of garden flowers lingering in the vents—all of it melted behind his eyes, behind that voice, behind the pressure of a palm that shouldn't have been there but was.

His steps were slow but direct, like his body knew the route better than his mind did.

He didn't run.

That would've drawn attention.

He just walked to the bathroom his body knew where to find while his mind was bracing for the fall. 

Marble underfoot. Gold accents. Soft white lighting that didn't belong to real life. It smelled like something neutral and expensive, like linen and citrus and something antiseptic meant to erase whatever human weakness dared to enter.

He didn't make it to the sink.

Not properly.

One hand caught the edge of the basin, the other pressed to his stomach, and then—

He retched.

Not like someone who'd eaten something wrong.

Like someone whose body was remembering too fast. Like someone trying to purge memory out of muscle, bone, blood. Like if he could just vomit enough, it would go away—the face, the voice, the hand, the contract, the cage.

Nothing came out.

He hadn't eaten.

There was nothing to give.

But his body didn't care.

He heaved until his chest burned and his vision swam, until his knees collapsed against cold tile and his hand slipped, catching the porcelain with a white-knuckled grip.

His breath came shallow, short, too fast. Too loud.

He couldn't stop shaking.

Not visibly, not violently—but all the small tremors had returned. Hands, ribs, the back of his neck. Like his body knew it had once belonged to something, someone, that carved silence into it. Like it recognized that scent, that closeness, that tone.

He sat there, barely upright, forehead pressed to his own forearm, elbows locked against the floor like they were holding him down instead of keeping him up, and he felt himself go—not dramatically, not like the novels said it happened—but in slow pieces. Thought by thought. Pulse by pulse. Like the world was folding itself in on top of him, and he didn't know how to stop it.

He didn't cry.

He hadn't earned the right to cry.

Not when this body had never been touched.

Not when this version of him had never bled.

He felt like a liar even in his own panic—nothing had happened, not here, not yet, not to this skin, not to these hands, not in this timeline with its marble floors and clean-swept titles and new beginnings dressed in silk—but the body didn't care about new names or clean slates, because the body remembered what the mind had survived and the mind remembered what the body had endured, and both of them were screaming now, not aloud, not anything so dramatic—just in small tremors, in the bile climbing up his throat, in the way his breath caught without sound.

He couldn't explain it.

Couldn't argue with it.

Couldn't undo the way his knees hit the tile or the way his palm slid down the side of the sink as if gravity itself had grown tired of pretending he was whole.

There was no wound.

There was no blood.

But something inside him had opened anyway.

Something too old, too quiet, too deeply carved to name.

And maybe that was the part that hurt the most—because it wasn't rage or even fear that curled up inside him like smoke under glass. It was recognition. Immediate and all-consuming. That scent. That voice. That smile too polite, too poised, too familiar in the most intimate and violating way.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to move.

He wanted to prove he was different now—that this version of him, the one with titles and silk and protection, would never collapse the way the other had.

But collapse didn't ask permission.

It just arrived.

It caught him somewhere between memory and marrow and stripped the air from his lungs until there was only cold tile, white light, and the thin edge of porcelain cutting into his wrist where he still held on.

And he thought—absurdly, bitterly—that this was why Misty had always liked him quiet.

Because this kind of silence looked like obedience.

Because this kind of silence didn't make a scene.

Because no one could accuse a boy of breaking when he never made a sound.