PART 2:

He didn’t look at her when she stepped outside. “You should go back in,” he said. His voice was low, controlled, with a roughness beneath the control that suggested he’d spent years teaching himself not to raise it. “I needed air,” Aurora said. “There’s air inside.” “Not the kind I needed.” A pause, then without turning.

You’re the one who was sitting at the exile table. Table 14 has a name. It does when the bride’s family puts you there on purpose. Now he looked at her. Up close, his face was harder than it appeared across the room. Lines around his eyes that spoke of sleeplessness more than age. A scar along his jawline, thin and old, nearly invisible unless the light caught it just right.

You’re Damian Cole’s former girlfriend. Does everyone here know that? Only the people who pay attention. He turned back to the water. Why did you come? To prove I could. And can you? The question hit something raw. Aurora felt her throat tighten and forced it back down. I’m still standing. Standing isn’t the same as surviving.

The wind picked up. Aurora wrapped her arms around herself. The cold was getting vicious, but going back inside meant returning to table 14 and the pity and the champagne she couldn’t drink. And suddenly that seemed worse than freezing. You’re shivering, Lucian said. I’m fine. He removed his jacket and held it out without looking at her.

The gesture was mechanical, devoid of romance, like handing someone a tool they needed. She took it. It smelled like sandalwood and something darker underneath. smoke maybe or the ghost of it. You don’t look like you want to be here either, she said. I don’t want to be anywhere. The honesty of it startled her.

Not the words themselves, but the way he said them, flat, matter of fact, like reporting weather. This was not a man performing sadness for sympathy. This was a man stating a condition he’d lived with so long it had become geography. Then why did you come? He drank the whiskey. one slow, deliberate swallow. Because Richard Ashford owes me a conversation he’s been avoiding for two years, and I find that people are more cooperative when I remind them I exist.

Inside, something crashed, glass breaking, raised voices. The band stopped playing. Aurora turned toward the doors and saw bodies moving in the ballroom. Sharp, agitated, wrong. Damian’s voice cut through the noise. That’s a lie. That’s a goddamn lie. Another voice. Richard Ashford’s rising to match. Lower your voice. Not here.

Not tonight. You told me it was clean. You told me none of this would I said lower your voice. Guests were standing, stepping back, clutching pearls and cocktails with the wideeyed confusion of people who’d never seen wealth misbehave. Viven stood beside the cake, frozen, her hands pressed over her mouth.

Two of Ashford’s security men were moving toward Damian with the practiced calm of people trained to make problems disappear quietly. Aurora watched the blood drained from her face because Damian wasn’t angry. He was afraid. She knew the difference. She’d spent two years studying that face, learning the micro expressions he thought he hid.

Anger made his jaw tight. Fear made his eyes move too fast, searching for exits. His eyes were searching now. Lucian watched the scene without expression. He set his glass on the railing. “And there it is,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “What just happened?” Auror asked. The groom discovered that the price of marrying into the Ashford family is higher than he was told. Lucian turned to face her.

In the cold light from the ballroom, his eyes were unreadable. You should leave, Aurora. Go home. Forget this wedding. Forget Damen Cole. and forget you ever stood on this balcony with me. How do you know my name? I know everyone’s name in that room. It’s how I stay alive. He said it simply, not as a boast, as fact.

Aurora’s heart was hammering, not from fear, or not only from fear, from the sudden disorienting sensation that the floor beneath her reality had shifted, and the world she thought she understood was built on something rotten. What are the Ashfords involved in? She asked. Things you don’t want to know. Maybe I do. Lucian studied her.

Really studied her. Not the way Damian used to look at her, which was always assessing what she could give him, but the way a man looks at something he can’t quite categorize, dangerous or harmless, asset or liability. No, he said finally. You don’t. He took his jacket back. Not roughly, but the gesture was final. Go home, Aurora Veil.

He walked inside. His two men materialized beside him like shadows remembering their owner. Within 30 seconds, he was gone, and the ballroom was left to deal with the wreckage of its own evening. Aurora stood on the balcony alone. Her dress was thin. The wind was brutal. Her phone buzzed. Jules again. Seriously, leave.

She should leave. She pulled up a ride share app, typed her address. Her thumb hovered over the confirm button. Then she looked back through the glass doors. Damian was in a corner with Richard Ashford, their heads close, their faces carved from the same pale terror. Vivien was crying. Guests were leaving in clusters, whispering, scandalized.

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