Chapter 230: Pretty girl (2)
She followed him.
The hallways of House D’Argente never creaked. No matter the hour or the season, the floors stayed polished to an impossible shine, the rugs too thick to betray a footstep, the air too carefully stilled to let anything echo. There was no wind, no warmth. No accidents. Just control in every thread and tile, wrapped around her like a leash no one spoke about.
The only sound now came from Daniel’s steps ahead of herand the soft tap of her own shoes.
Ophelia kept her chin level and her spine straight, because anything less would be obvious. Because weakness, even the shape of it, was something Serathine would never name but always see.
Even when Serathine had told her that her mother, her own mother, had been executed, nothing in her had cracked aloud. No trembling voice, no stifled sobs. She hadn’t asked to see the body or the ash. She hadn’t begged to know if Misty had been afraid, if they let her speak before the sentence was carried out, if she’d been granted dignity or just processed like a sealed box disappearing through the back doors of the capital. Those questions had been the only thing she could hear in her mind for days, but she hadn’t let them slip. Not once. Not in front of her.
She hated Serathine as much as he hated Lucas.
Serathine had taken everything from her with grace. With that distant elegance she wielded even in the lazy mornings she liked to savor her coffee. She hadn’t humiliated Ophelia. Hadn’t insulted her. She’d done something worse.
She’d made her irrelevant.
Lucas had done the same.
He was supposed to stay where he belonged, in the margins, in the shadows, obedient and pliable, the perfect investment folded into Misty’s long game. But he hadn’t. He’d changed the terms. He’d been claimed, crowned, praised.
He’d been seen.
And that was never part of the plan.