The cold hit Ayra hard as she was dragged back into the mansion, but it was nothing compared to the chill in her chest.
Her father’s iron grip on her arm, his men trailing like shadows, and the oppressive silence, crushed her.
She didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. She wanted them to believe she'd spent all her fight in her escape attempt. Now she was a shell of the determination she once carried.
The mansion loomed in the dark like a silent judge. Its halls, so familiar, felt foreign and sterile.
She barely registered her father’s clipped, furious whispers to the guards. All she could feel was the weight pressing down on her.
Oh, she knew the escape attempt would have failed - she had planned for it to fail, after all, as her father was simply too cunning a fox that a singular attempt would see her free - but perhaps deep down inside her, she had wished he would have let her go. Just... turned a blind eye.
The days blurred into a suffocating haze of monotony. Ayra’s room was no longer her sanctuary.
It was a gilded cage - spacious and luxurious, certainly, with towering windows that overlooked the sprawling lake behind the estate.
She had always thought it beautiful, but recently, the beauty rang hollow.
Her father didn’t bother with pretense. The day she was dragged back, he took everything—her phone, her journals and even the half-formed nonsenses she'd scribbled in the margins, anything that could connect her to the outside world really.
The staff avoided her like the plague, their stiff movements betraying their fear of her father and most importantly, Lucian.
New servants replaced the ones she had grown up with and ever more unfamiliar men strutted around the premises as security.
Meals were delivered like clockwork, polished and perfect, but she could hardly savour the taste on her tongue as she ate.
Her room, with all its luxury, was nothing more than a cell. And every time she tried to push back, the bars of her invisible cage closed in tighter.
She had known this would happen to some extent but it still hurt that it did.
.......
Trapped, with nothing but her own thoughts, Ayra felt the walls close in. She’d stand by the window for hours, hands pressed to the cold glass, watching the grounds below.
Guards patrolled in stiff, mechanical routes she had memorized by the third day. It didn’t matter—every door to her room was locked, bolted tight from the outside.
That was a slight hiccup with her overall plan.
A second escape was meant to be the main deal, the first serving just to throw her father off her trail for long enough during the second escape - a way to plant preconceived notions in his mind, if you will.
By the time she fled for real, he would be looking for her in the wrong places. But she hadn't expected security to be tightened to this level.
No matter what she did she could see no way out of the fortress her home had become and she felt more and more suffocated as the wedding day arrived.
What was even worse was the silence.
Without a clock or a phone, time stretched endlessly. Ayra tried to measure it by the way sunlight poured through the window, but even that felt meaningless.
It... WAS meaningless.
Her once-cozy room, filled with books and small tokens of her life, was stripped bare. The emptiness echoed her own feelings—isolated, hollow, trapped. There was no hope in sight.
....
She was allowed outings.
These were carefully controlled. A walk through the gardens here, always with an escort; a brief trip to another wing of the house there, her father’s gaze burning into her back.
Uncomfortable didn’t even begin to cover it. But still, she bore it with a dull, bitter numbness.
Nights were harder. The numbness gave way to fire. To rage and white hot anger.
She paced endlessly for hours only to fall back asleep when despair and the reality of her situation hit her.
And her father’s words from the car ride would haunt her slumber.
She did not want to marry Lucian. Literally anyone one else would have done but to marry the Director himself?
Ayra knew a one-way ticket to death and despair when she saw one.
....
The cadre of free cities that dotted the Ian peninsula basically had a dominant family that called the shots there and Sostch - the city Ayra lived in - was basically ruled by the Cyrus family.
They were a business family in name and in cooperation with other influential families formed The Orrery Consortium or, as it's more commonly known, simply The Consortium.
It was the most influential conglomerate in the world by a long shot and the Cyrus family had always been the directors of the enterprise.
While the Cyrus family in general had no stain, rumours abound about the Director. Their dealings were all shady - and quite necessarily so, as maintaining their grip on the steering wheel of the Consortium would always involve the use of the more unsavoury parts of society.
Not to mention the sheer ruthlessness that seemed to historically be a part of all the Directors throughout history.
And Lucian Cyrus was no different. He was cold, and his methods either left you speechless in shock or burying your head under a pillow in fear.
Hence one can see why Lucian is a man Ayra would loathe to marry. Even rumours made him out to be more a devil than a man.
She hadn’t seen him since that afternoon in his office, but his presence loomed as if he were watching from the shadows.
And perhaps he was. Ayra suspected that it was his men who patrolled the estate, the dark-suited guards who made her skin crawl with tension.
She wasn’t just her father’s pawn anymore it seemed; she was Lucian’s as well. The thought made her stomach twist in horror.
Lucian, with his enigmatic eyes and quiet authority, seemed an infuriating man.
Did he think of her at all? Did he know she was being kept like this? Did he care?
She thought not.
The iron bars on her window mocked her. She tried appealing to a maid once, but the woman fled the moment Ayra hinted at needing help, her fear palpable. Her father was thorough. Or perhaps Lucian was.
Thoughts of the both of them drove her mad.
Some nights, the weight of it all crushed her. She’d sit by the window, staring at the iron bars, and let the tears come.
The memories of her mother haunted her, a bittersweet echo of warmth and safety.
What would her mother think now? Would she be disappointed in her husband—or would she understand?
......
Her father visited sometimes but they were mercifully rare.
Once he'd entered her room with the swagger of a man who thought he’d won.
“You’re a smart girl, Ayra,” he said once, his voice dripping with false patience. “Why fight this? Lucian is a good match for you.”
She bit her tongue so hard it bled, refusing to respond.
Even after he left, the words stuck in her head, gnawing at her. A good match? For what? Power? Status? It certainly wasn’t for the life she wanted—a life she could choose for herself.
Then one drab morning, good news greeted her ears. Lucian had postponed the wedding. Indefinitely.
Small mercies.
The person who brought the news, however, was less than welcome. Her elder sister Lisbeth stood at her door, sharp eyes scanning the room with a predatory glare.
"What do you want?" Ayra asked, sounding tired and depressed.
Lisbeth raised a brow and sneered.
"Came to see my little sis, is all," she replied. "Your wedding was postponed is what I actually came to tell you, but now I can't help but want to gloat."
Ayra did not fancy the conversation that would follow.
The music in the ballroom had changed. Slower. More decadent. An undercurrent of unease hummed beneath the violins. Ayra stood near a column laced with gold-leaf etchings, her eyes scanning the crowd. She wore a crimson gown fitted to kill, quite literally—the concealed blade strapped to her thigh pressed against her skin, a cold reminder she wasn’t just here to dance.Lucian had disappeared a few minutes ago, after murmuring something about a call. That had been almost twenty minutes ago.And now, something was wrong.It started subtly. A group of servers who’d been laughing too freely by the wine fountain had suddenly gone stiff, faces grim. Guards posted at the entrance began moving—one by one, exchanging places or vanishing into side hallways. Their formation wasn’t protective anymore. It was closing in.Ayra tilted her glass and pretended to sip the wine, watching the crowd over the rim. The room was a vision of wealth: crystalline chandeliers, velvet drapes drawn wide to reve
The villa had never gleamed brighter, it seemed. Light poured from golden chandeliers like a molten sun, their flame mirrored in the crystal goblets and polished floors. The masked guests moved like shadow. The low swell of string instruments wove around murmured laughter and fleeting glances.Ayra descended the main staircase with Lucian beside her, his hand resting lightly on hers. Their entrance was calculated—timed for effect. Conversation dimmed as heads turned. A hundred eyes veiled behind ornate masks watched the pair glide across the floor, curiosity and calculation pulsing beneath every breath.Lucian’s mask was forged from dark silver—elegant, cold, merciless. It clung to the contours of his face like it had always belonged there. Ayra wore midnight black lace, delicate as cobwebs, with crimson crystals edging the feathers that crowned her temple. Her dress was deep red velvet, cinched at the waist with a golden cord. She was a painting come to life—beautiful, dangerous,
The sun had barely risen when Lucian left. A quick press of lips to Ayra’s forehead, a brief, cryptic glance, and he was gone. No details. No goodbye to Elias. Just the familiar murmur to his men and the low growl of engines disappearing beyond the iron gates.Ayra stared at the door long after it shut.She wasn’t used to this kind of silence. It filled the villa like fog, thick and unnatural. She made breakfast for Elias, answered his endless questions with a smile she didn’t feel, and watched as he disappeared off with Rhea to spend the day out of the estate. She... appreciated the thought more than anything else.But the quiet returned all too quickly for Ayra.Without Lucian, the villa felt… empty. Cold in the corners. Still in a way that made her skin itch and her eyes wander.It wasn’t just the absence of footsteps echoing down the halls or the low murmur of Lucian’s voice on a call in his study. It was how her body noticed the lack of tension in the air—that electric pressure th
He lowered himself slowly into the chair across from her, resting his elbows on his knees. “I searched for her for years. Even after I was told she was dead, I refused to believe it. I held on to that hope like it was the last thing tethering me to any sense of humanity. Because... it was, in a way.”Ayra couldn’t stop herself from whispering, “And then you saw me.”Lucian looked at her. The firelight flickered over his face, deepening the lines of fatigue and guilt there. “I didn’t just see you. I was shown you.”Her brows furrowed.“Ferdinand,” he said bitterly. “And your sister, Lisbeth. They planted photographs. Documents. Testimonies. They made it look real. They told me you were Isa. That you’d survived, been hidden away, changed your name. Everything fit. You looked so much like her—same eyes, same mouth. It was… maddening. And I was desperate to believe it. I wanted it to be true.”Ayra’s breath caught. Her fingers trembled in her lap. This explained so much of what had happene
Ayra’s recovery was swift, and by the following afternoon, she was back on her feet—if a little slower than usual. The fever had burned her out, leaving her dazed and lightheaded, like she’d been gone for weeks instead of just a day. But Lucian had made sure she ate, drank, and took her medicine. He hovered without smothering, quiet but watchful, always there when she so much as shifted. And when she had opened her eyes that morning to find him asleep at the side of her bed, her fingers locked between his hands, something had shifted. The heat of his skin, the breath against her wrist, the vulnerable crease between his brows—Ayra hadn’t been able to stop herself. She’d kissed the back of his head, softly, stupidly.Elias had ruined the moment, of course.“Mummy’s doing something naughty,” the boy had whispered loudly from the foot of the bed, startling her so badly she nearly fell off the pillows.Now, standing in the sun-drenched training wing with a pistol in her grip and sweat be
The moment the doctor left, Elias bounded into the room, trailed by two nannies who could neither stop him nor match his speed. He launched himself at the bed like a missile.“Mom! You’re sick!”Ayra opened her eyes sluggishly. “Yeah...”“Can I take care of you?” Elias asked earnestly, already climbing onto the bed and snuggling beside her without waiting for an answer.Ayra’s lips curved slightly. “You already are, buddy.”Lucian watched from the foot of the bed as Elias wrapped his arms around Ayra and pressed a sloppy kiss to her forehead.Something...soured in Lucian’s chest.He stared. Blinked. Then narrowed his eyes at his own son.Elias, blissfully unaware of any sort of emotional disturbance, proceeded to offer Ayra his favorite blanket, a chewed plastic action figure, and a half-eaten lollipop from his pocket.Lucian had never seen Ayra smile more in one moment.She didn’t swat Elias away. Didn’t frown or wince. She leaned into the contact, even closed her eyes while Elias pet