Chapter 19: What Carries Over
The room was too quiet.
Lucas sat cross-legged on the edge of his new bed, phone in hand, back resting against the cold stone headboard of Serathine’s estate. The drapes were drawn, but slivers of late afternoon light slipped through, gilding the sharp lines of the architecture and catching faintly on the silk hem of the shirt someone else had chosen for him.
For the first time since his adoption, he was alone.
No maids. No tailors. No handlers or assistants or curious guests offering too-sweet smiles.
Just silence.
He exhaled slowly, pressing the edge of the phone to his temple, eyes half-closed. His head still ached from the fitting, the fittings before the fittings, and the endless reassurances that everything was "almost ready" for the Gala.
His Gala.
His coming-of-age ball had become a full-scale imperial event overnight. The invitations had gone out before he’d even seen the final guest list. He hadn’t picked the venue. He hadn’t asked for a debut.
And most infuriatingly—he hadn’t asked for Trevor Ariston Fitzgeralt.
The phone buzzed softly in his hand.
He pulled up the latest court news, scrolling past headlines and curated op-eds until he found the thing that had started clawing at the back of his mind like a splinter.
’House D’Argente’s Heir to Debut at Baye: Rumors of Northern Interest Confirmed