A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 77: With All Due Ceremony

The hall was silent as Anastasia descended, every step muffled by the thick carpet that lined the marble stairs. Light filtered through the high windows in fractured shards, catching on the hem of her gown and trailing beside her like smoke.

The dress clung like a second skin—green and black silk threaded in spectral lines, tailored to glide rather than move, each fold shaped by unseen magic. The sheer sleeves shimmered faintly with emeralds stitched into frostlike patterns, and the train fell behind her in dark waves. The weight of the stones sewn through it tugged at her spine with every step, a subtle reminder of the hours spent under servant hands, pinning, adjusting, perfecting. It had taken four fittings. Three seamstresses. One tailor flown in from Vienna. The sleeves alone—diaphanous and sheer, scattered with emeralds like shards of shattered glass—had taken two weeks to embroider. She hadn't looked in the mirror when they finished. She didn't need to. She knew what she looked like.

A bride carved from obsidian.

A creature of careful design.

Her hair had taken over an hour—combed, twisted, set into a crown of braids that wound at the back of her head and vanished beneath a net of emerald clips and diamond pins. Dozens of them, placed with surgical precision. She hadn't spoken once during the process. The help hadn't dared meet her eyes.

She reached the second-floor landing and paused, hand ghosting over the polished banister. From here, she could already hear the low murmur of voices through the heavy doors of the drawing room—measured, masculine, clipped. She knew that tone. It was the sound of politics disguised as civility. Of posturing masked as discussion.

She was fifteen minutes late, by design.

Anastasia smoothed her fingers down the curve of her skirts and began her descent, step by measured step. Her heartbeat was even. Her expression, unreadable. The kind of poised silence that made people watch closely and then question why they were watching.

She had walked into enough rooms by now to know how to make them fall quiet.

The moment the drawing room doors opened—held by a pair of unspeaking house-elves in forest green livery—she was already inside the role. Cold. Bored. Beautiful in the way winter is beautiful: the kind that kills things.

Dozens of heads turned, subtle and not. Conversation faltered. It didn't stop—no one would dare—but it stumbled, like a heartbeat skipped at the wrong moment.

The room was crowded. Lucius stood near the fireplace, gold cufflinks gleaming as he gestured mid-conversation, posture just a touch too relaxed to be natural. Narcissa sat in a curved chair beside him, composed as always, her gown an icy silver that caught the firelight like moonlight on glass. Her eyes met Anastasia's—sharp, assessing—but she said nothing.

Bellatrix stood farther off, in a slash of deep navy and black, her expression half-curious, half-amused. She tilted her head and gave Anastasia a slow, deliberate once-over, then smirked.

The Rosiers had gathered by the bay window—Evan with his mother and father, the latter of whom Anastasia recognised instantly by the overly starched collar and wine-red cravat. There were others too: aunts, uncles, cousins she hadn't seen since her last formal engagement. Distant Malfoy relations. Black cousins. A pair of Travers siblings. Even Aunt Druella. And just near the piano—

Regulus.

He was in full black tie, hair pushed back, collar stiff with starch. He looked older in this light, like the edges of boyhood had finally burned away. He hadn't seen her yet. Not properly. He was watching someone else speak.

She kept walking.

The room opened for her without a word—conversations shifted, shoulders angled, space appeared like magic. She made her way across the dark carpet without glancing at anyone in particular. Just the faintest lift of her chin, the kind of indifferent acknowledgement that made people bow their heads in return.