Chapter 5
I went to Blackthorne the next morning.
Not alone.
Five bodyguards stayed outside the main house.
I entered with one.
Enough to reject Gideon’s terms without turning the meeting into invasion.
The bell tower stood above the roof.
Same three strikes every hour.
The sound from the telephone.
Gideon Vale waited in the main hall.
Older.
Thinner.
Still upright.
“Lucia.”
“Gideon.”
His eyes moved behind me.
“You brought security.”
“I brought memory.”
He almost smiled.
Then:
“Where is Hazel?”
“Home.”
His disappointment was immediate.
Good.
“Why were you expecting her?”
“The Table voted.”
“I abolished the Table.”
“You left a room.”
He gestured toward the old dining chamber.
“A room does not vanish because one woman refuses to sit in it.”
There.
Not subtle.
I walked closer.
“One woman?”
He realized.
Did not apologize.
Fine.
We entered the council room.
Six chairs.
Dust on four.
Fresh polish on two.
Gideon and Wesley had been meeting here.
On the table sat Hazel’s photograph.
Taken at her third birthday.
Beside it—
a small silver Bellandi signet ring sized for a child.
My jaw tightened.
“What is that?”
“Symbol.”
“For what?”
“Recognition.”
No.
Ownership.
Then Gideon showed me something else.
A photograph of myself at age four.
Standing in the same room.
Wearing a child-sized ring.
I stopped.
I had no memory of it.
“You were brought here too.”
My stomach turned.
“By who?”
“Your father.”
“Did my mother know?”
Gideon looked away.
That answer was enough.
History had not started with Hazel.
I had once been the child in the room.
Then he said:
“You stayed three months.”
I stared.
Impossible.
I remembered one childhood summer as a long illness at my aunt’s estate.
That was the story I had been told.
Apparently I had spent it at Blackthorne.
Being prepared.
For what?
May you like
Gideon looked at my signet ring.
“For exactly what you became.”
