A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 26: Yes, Tom

Tom shifted in his seat, eyes narrowing. He wanted to appear calm, but annoyance and something deeper flared behind his dark irises. "Stop being petulant," he snapped. "This... lifeless existence. It's worse than your hissed retorts and curses."

His words hung in the air, laced with frustration. Then he leaned forward, hand sliding across the table toward hers. The gesture was oddly gentle, but Anastasia recognised the calculated softness, a rehearsed attempt at consolation. She didn't move, didn't recoil or accept it.

His voice lowered. "What would make it better, Anastasia?" There was a calculated curiosity to his tone, as though her well-being was merely another strategic manoeuvre.

He studied her with an unreadable expression. Tension rippled across the table, suffocating the air. "Perhaps a reminder is in order," he murmured, "of exactly what's at stake." Leaning back in his chair, he added, "Maybe it's time Regulus paid us a visit, maybe that would make you feel better."

At the mention of her cousin's name, Anastasia's mask cracked. She set her fork down with deliberate precision, her hands trembling slightly. Anger surged behind her chest like an approaching thunderstorm.

"So what do you want from me?" she demanded, voice rasping from disuse. "When I speak up, you strike me down. When I stay silent, you threaten Regulus—or anyone else you can use to keep me in line. I've given you everything. And yet—" Her throat felt tight. "It's still not enough."

She glanced at his hand—beautiful and deadly, the same one that had cast the Cruciatus Curse on her. A hollow ache spread through her chest.

Tom tilted his head, dark hair catching the candlelight, his cold curiosity evident. "And you?" he asked slowly. "What's made you this...weak? Because that's what you are right now, Anastasia. Fragile. Miserable. Why?"

She clenched her jaw, nails pressing into her palms. The question shouldn't have hurt so much, but it cut to the heart of her turmoil. After a long pause, she admitted, in a trembling hush, "You ask me to pull myself together, but this is merely the result of your actions, Tom."

Tom's gaze lingered on her, his expression shifting from cold fury into something more complicated. When he finally stood, she reflexively shrank back, her eyes screwing shut in anticipation of the blow she was sure would follow.

But instead of striking her, Tom sank down onto one knee at her side and rested a hand against her cheek. Anastasia flinched from his touch at first, trembling. His fingertips hovered, then gently brushed her skin. She risked opening her eyes. What she saw nearly startled her more than any wand raised in anger.

"I may have been...overly harsh," Tom said. The words were slow, as if each one was pried from his chest. "I don't handle defiance well. But I will try."

He leaned in, pressing his lips to hers. It was neither gentle nor vicious—somewhere in between. Anastasia stayed rigid beneath the kiss, her mind screaming for her to retreat, her body unsure if this fleeting softness was yet another manipulation. She remembered all too vividly the wand raised against her, the searing pain of the Cruciatus Curse.

When he finally drew back, his palm stayed against her cheek, his thumb tracing a line across the hollow beneath her eye. She sensed an unspoken vow in his silence—one that promised either the vestiges of mercy or the next stage of her prison. Her world had shrunk to nothing but that hand on her face, and that candlelit room slowly closing in.

In that precarious moment, she felt more trapped than ever. She swallowed the fearful lump in her throat and let her gaze drop to the table—a table where only half an hour ago she'd sat in blank-faced resignation. Now she wondered which was safer: to remain a broken doll who never fought back, or to risk unleashing that fragment of fire still buried within her, knowing exactly how he might crush it again.