Mortimer's face drained of color so quickly that Aveline almost pitied him. Almost. For a fleeting second she wondered if he might faint and spare everyone the spectacle, but no such mercy arrived. The realization was settling into him, heavy and suffocating.
If Theron owned the debt… then Mortimer owed him.
Everything.
Aveline turned her head slowly toward the man at her side.
Oh.
Oh.
So that was why he had been glittering like a chandelier under candlelight.
He hadn't dressed like a merchant attending negotiations. He had dressed like bait, and Mortimer, greedy and self-assured, had swallowed it whole without even tasting the hook.
Aveline looked back at Mortimer, and this time her smile was no longer tight or brittle. It was unhurried. Almost contemplative.
"So…" she asked softly, as though discussing the weather, "we own them?"
Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain the musicians could hear it over their trembling strings.
Theron owned the men who starved her. The women who set dogs on her and laughed when she screamed. He owned the house that devoured her childhood and called it discipline.
"Yes," Theron answered, calm as still water.
His hand settled at the small of her back, warm and steady. It did not grip. It did not cage. It was a quiet presence, claiming nothing and offering everything.
"Yes, we do."
The words did not echo. They sank. Deep into her bones.
But Theron was not finished. His gaze shifted, slowly and deliberately, and landed on Henry.
Henry had been staring at Aveline far too long. Recognition flickered across his face, ugly and intrusive.
"You're Aveline, aren't you?" he asked. "I know you far too well…" he smirked, placing his hand on the table.
She twitched.
It was small… barely perceptible, but Theron felt it beneath his palm. The subtle recoil. The instinctive tightening. It wasn't fear of exposure. It was older than that. Deeper. Something carved into muscle memory. Something that surfaced in the dead of night when she flinched in her sleep and whispered hoarse pleas to be left alone. Promises to be quiet. To stop fighting.
Theron had long suspected the shadows haunting her were not born of mere cruelty.
Now he understood. Her "cousin." How unfortunate for him.
Theron rose. Slowly at first, measured and composed. Then the air shifted.
In a single, fluid movement, he stepped onto his chair, planted a boot onto the banquet table, and crossed it in two swift strides. Porcelain shattered beneath him. Goblets toppled. Wine spilled across white linen like fresh blood.
Screams rippled through the hall.
Henry barely had time to push back his seat before Theron seized his wrist and slammed it flat against the table.
Steel flashed.
The dagger drove into the wood between Henry's fingers with a brutal crack… so close the blade grazed skin.
Silence dropped like an executioner's hood.
Henry's breath came fast and ragged.
Theron leaned down, shadows carving sharp lines into his face. His voice was no longer smooth. No longer diplomatic.
"Tell me," he said softly, pressing the blade just enough for Henry to feel the promise in it, "what would you like to do with him?"
The question was not for the man trembling beneath his hand.
It was for Aveline.
And in that suspended heartbeat, Theron understood.
He had wondered, truly wondered, how a girl so proud, so sharp-tongued and unyielding, could lower herself to offer to become someone's mistress. It had not aligned with the Aveline he had known. It had unsettled him.
Now it made perfect, horrifying sense.
She had not been offering herself out of desire or ambition. She had been choosing the lesser evil.
When power was stripped from her, when her body was no longer entirely her own, she had tried to seize at least the illusion of control. If she moved first, then she was not being taken. If she negotiated, then perhaps there would be boundaries. If she offered, then perhaps it would feel less like theft.
His Aveline… who once had walked through gardens like a butterfly skimming sunlight, had been reduced to believing that strategy meant selling herself before someone else could claim her.
Unforgivable.
Rage bled into his vision until even Henry's face seemed distant and blurred. His eyes burned so fiercely that the black of his irises nearly disappeared beneath the red.
Unforgivable.
Aveline looked up at him, startled. She did not know who he was.
To her, he had been a knight in armor--controlled, disciplined, distant. Now he stood atop a shattered banquet table in silks and jewels, claiming ownership of her childhood estate as though it were a trinket.
Who was Theron?
The question flickered in her eyes.
But it did not matter.
Around them, Mortimer was sputtering, Isolde whispering frantically into Beatrice's ear, urging her to dance, to laugh, to distract… to pretend this was salvageable.
For the first time in years, Aveline did not look at the floor.
She turned.
She looked at Henry.
There had been a time when she was little more than bones and bruises, barely clinging to life in a cold room at the back of the estate. And he had come to her at night with sugared pastries and honeyed words, crouching beside her like a savior.
She had believed him. Believed she finally had someone.
Until… his hands lingered too long. Until, kindness turned to something suffocating and wrong.
She had screamed. Fought. Scratched. She had gone to Isolde in tears.
And what had she received in return?
Canings. Starvation. Accusations that she had dared to tempt her "precious son."
Even when the fever left her half-dead, Henry had still come. Still tried. He was not a misguided boy. He was a beast.
Somehow, she had survived him. Adapted. Learned.
For two years, she had kept herself filthy on purpose. Sweat, ash, and grime worked into her skin until she smelled unbearable. He would strike her with whatever was nearest, curse her, call her disgusting… but he would not touch her.
That was enough.
Now, standing here, with his wrist pinned beneath a dagger, her entire body recoiled as if she could still feel his fingers crawling over her skin.
Her hands curled against the table. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.
And she spoke.
"Chop off his fingers," Aveline said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her bones. "One by one."
It would not kill him. Not immediately.
She did not want mercy for him. She wanted him to understand fear.
Theron's lips curved faintly. Not in cruelty or delight, but in approval.
"Very well."
Henry's composure shattered instantly. "Mother!" he choked, twisting beneath the blade. "Mother, make him stop!"
Isolde, pale and trembling, shoved Beatrice toward the center of the hall. "Dance!" she hissed frantically, still clinging to the absurd belief that this chaos had begun over a social slight. "It's because you refused to dance—fix it!"
Mortimer, however, understood far more clearly. His pride warred with his terror.
"Guards!" he roared.
Debt or not, humiliation inside his own hall was something he could not stomach. His son pinned like an animal on the banquet table? Can't be allowed!
"Guards!"
Aveline stiffened.
The word struck her like a whip.
Her gaze flew to Theron.
For a fraction of a second, she feared she had miscalculated. Feared she had pushed too far. Feared she had mistaken glitter for power.
But Theron was looking at her. And he was smiling. Calm. Certain. Almost amused.
He did not hesitate. He pulled the dagger free.
Henry barely had time to gasp… and then Theron drove the dagger down again.
This time, the blade pierced through the back of Henry's hand and embedded deep into the oak beneath.
The sound was sickening. Metal biting wood. Flesh yielding.
Henry's scream tore through the hall.
But Theron's voice rose above it.
"Guards!"
The command thundered. It was not a plea. It was an order.
Aveline stood abruptly, her pulse slamming against her ribs.
Heavy boots answered, not from the outer gates, but from inside the hall, and the shadows near the pillars… From beside the doors and behind the drawn curtains.
Men in armor stepped forward—disciplined, silent, unmistakably not Mortimer's.
Steel glinted under candlelight.
They did not look at the Viscount.
They looked at Theron, and waited.
Mortimer's voice faltered. "W-what is this?"
The air shifted.
And Theron did not look like a mere guest in this hall.
"Secure the estate," Theron ordered calmly. "No one leaves."