A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 77: With All Due Ceremony

"You don't need it. And neither do I. We were born with better."

He turned his face slightly, meeting her eyes for the first time in minutes.

"And what's that?" he asked.

She straightened.

"Legacy," she said. "Lineage. Precision. The ability to look them in the eye and not flinch. Let them play games of loyalty and punishment. Let them brand each other like cattle. We're meant for higher things."

She paused. "So stop chasing scraps."

His eyes dropped, face unreadable. Then, slowly, he gave the faintest nod.

"I'm trying," he said.

She placed a hand lightly over his heart, the gesture more symbolic than sentimental. "Try harder."

For a moment, they just stood there, siblings, not by blood, but by something older. A shared inheritance of restraint and pressure and cold marble hallways.

A voice broke across the ferns—clipped, amused, and unmistakably Lucius.

"There you are."

Anastasia turned, eyes narrowing slightly as he stepped around the screen with the easy, entitled grace of someone born to interrupt.

"Thought you might've eloped," Lucius said dryly, swirling the wine in his glass as though he hadn't just eavesdropped on a delicate conversation. "I suppose that would've been redundant."

Regulus shifted beside her, spine taut again. Whatever flicker of ease had softened his shoulders moments ago was gone.

Anastasia's expression didn't change. "Don't be tedious."

Lucius smirked. "I try."

He turned his attention briefly to Regulus. "You clean up well, Black. Though I think that collar's trying to kill you."

Regulus didn't answer. His jaw ticked.

Lucius let the silence settle, then tilted his head. "Tom's looking for you," he said to Anastasia. "He's doing that thing where he doesn't say it, but everyone feels it."

"I know the one," she murmured.

"Let's head back in," Anastasia concluded, adjusting the fall of her sleeve with absent precision. Then, softer, almost an afterthought—"I'll speak to Walburga."

Regulus didn't thank her. He just nodded once, the way people do when gratitude feels too exposed to wear aloud. Together, they stepped out from behind the curtain of ferns, and the moment they reentered the room, the air changed.

Not audibly. Not even visibly. But she felt it.

Tom saw her instantly.

He stood near the eastern mantelpiece, speaking to the elder Rosiers and the Selwyns—Eurydice's parents and a small constellation of cousins gathered around in a huddle of gold embroidery and strategically deployed furs. Tom's voice, while technically polite, carried the unmistakable cadence of a man bored beyond redemption. He was indulging the conversation the way one humours a distant uncle—nodding just often enough, lips curled in a patient approximation of interest. But his eyes wandered. His fingers didn't fidget, but they flexed.

Lucius chuckled low under his breath beside her. "Rosiers," he said, as if it were a diagnosis.

Anastasia didn't ask for clarification. She didn't need to.

Evan stood slightly apart from the others, pale and visibly withering under the weight of his own anxiety. He had that look about him—shoulders too high, hands too still, as if he were afraid to make a sound for fear of being noticed again. She noted, with some amusement, that he wasn't drinking. His goblet sat full and undisturbed at the edge of a side table, untouched.