Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 7.5 - Linked in Public

Then another.

She didn't hear him approach. Of course she didn't.

She felt it first—

The unmistakable trace of oceanic scent—

cold, clean, impossible to replicate.

A scent she'd never admit to missing.

But it reached her like memory.

Uninvited.

Unavoidable.

A shadow stretched beside her on the ground—too deliberate to be anyone else.

Then—

"You forget your wings, Tinkerbell?"

His voice was calm. Not mocking. Just... amused.

That infuriating Luc Raveneau kind of amused—

like he'd claimed a private victory simply by being the only one allowed to see her undone.

And for one strange second—

the weight lifted.

Aria blinked. "What?"

Luc stepped in closer, each footfall a quiet echo against the chamber's hollowed hush.

"You're sitting there," he said, "like you've never flown before."

She huffed a breath—half laugh, half disbelief. "I just got unmade in front of Avalon's tribunal."

Luc tilted his head. "You survived."

"Barely."

"Barely still counts."

She didn't look up. Not yet.

"I don't remember sitting down," she muttered.

"Of course you don't."

A pause.

"You were too busy not collapsing."

There was movement—quiet, deliberate.

She caught it from the corner of her eye.

Luc had lowered himself beside her.

Not crouched like someone attending to a casualty.

He knelt—elegant, composed. Every gesture precise, like the heir of a dynasty never taught how to flinch.

One knee pressed to the ground. One hand resting on his thigh.

The other—offered. Open. Still.

Not touching. Not demanding.

Just... there.

A gesture so simple, it rewrote the silence around them.

A Dominion heir, kneeling.

Not in apology. Not in dominance.

But in something harder to define.

He didn't say take it. He didn't say anything at all.

Aria didn't move. But she looked at him—and something in her steadied.

His uniform immaculate. His posture: predatory ease.

But his eyes—those impossible Dominion blue eyes—weren't cold.

They were watching her like she wasn't some anomaly to be debated.