A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 78: Long May it Echo

Chapter 78: Long May it Echo

The procession had begun.

One by one, the black carriages pulled away from the gravelled front drive of the Riddle Estate, their lacquered doors gleaming like beetle shells under a sun that had, at last, deigned to appear. A rare blue sky stretched overhead, thin and temporary as good manners. But the sun, so long absent, felt almost artificial now. A theatre light. A spotlight.

Still, the rain had left behind its mark in the form of sodden soil and silver puddles around the Estate. Fortunately, no guest would suffer the indignity of a soiled cuff or splash-marked shoe. Charms—elaborate, expensive, and mostly invisible—had been laid across the estate's entrance like lace: not to protect the guests from nature, but to preserve the illusion that nature had never touched them at all.

From the front steps, Anastasia watched the carriages disappear one by one down the winding lane, the wheels leaving no track behind them. The sun struck the estate's eastern spire in an angle so precise it seemed designed by committee.

The air tasted of early spring: wet stone, cedar, and whatever cologne Lucius had decided was fashionable this quarter.

She stood between him and Narcissa, waiting. Not impatiently. Just... suspended.

Narcissa was adjusting a single pearl pin in her hair. Lucius, meanwhile, had lit a cigarette with the flair of a man who considered it performance art.

"Really?" Anastasia said, her tone more observation than judgment. "In this crowd?"

Lucius exhaled, his profile framed in curling smoke. "What, afraid it'll offend the Ministry?"

"I'm surprised you'd indulge in something so—" she paused, letting the word curl—"non-magical in this environment."

Lucius gave a noncommittal shrug, tipping ash into the gravel. "You think any of them are brave enough to comment?"

Anastasia watched the smoke curl over Lucius' shoulder, slow and deliberate. "You're lucky Tom isn't paying attention."

"I'm blessed every day," Lucius replied, taking another drag. "Jealous?"

She didn't answer. Not with words. Just let her gaze slide down the cigarette and back to him—disinterested, but mildly amused. The corner of her mouth twitched.

Narcissa shot him a look, not irritated, just faintly resigned. "You promised you'd stop smoking in front of diplomats."

Lucius tapped the ash into a conjured silver tray hovering near his elbow. "Diplomats are the reason I started."

Lucius dragged again, exhaled slowly. "I mean, the delegation from Vienna's already half-drunk and pretending not to be. I give them another hour before they start reciting poetry about ancestral acreage."

"Don't say that in front of them," Narcissa warned.

"I won't," Lucius said. "I'll say it behind them. Where it'll sting properly."

Anastasia's lips twitched. "You're in a mood."

"I'm in patent leather," he corrected, lifting one foot and letting the sunlight catch on the ridiculous mirror-shined toe. "And I've just spent an hour listening to Rodolphus Lestrange compare barometric pressure to bloodlines. If I'm intolerable, blame the guest list."

"I thought you helped write the guest list," Anastasia offered.

"Exactly," he said. "Have you seen Rodulphus' speech? It's five pages long."

Narcissa sighed. "God help us all."

"No one here believes in God," Anastasia said, stepping forward.

Lucius looked up at the sky. "And yet here we are. Dressed for worship."