Chapter 4: The Poisoned Toast

The "doting" continued through dinner. Elias fed her grapes with a hand that had broken a man’s ribs an hour prior. Seraphina laughed at his dry, dark wit, resting her head on his shoulder as if they hadn't spent years trying to erase each other’s names from the earth.

But under the table, Seraphina’s hand was on the grip of the pistol strapped to Elias’s thigh.

"Now?" she breathed against his neck, her lips brushing his skin. To the room, it looked like a secret endearment. To Elias, it was the signal.

"Now," he whispered back.

Marcus rose, lifting a glass. "A toast! To the union of Thorne and Vane. May it last as long as their ancestors."

"Oh, it will," Elias said, standing up. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "But your ancestors are tired of waiting for you, Marcus."

The violence was surgical.

Before Marcus could drink, Seraphina’s hidden pistol cleared the table. Crack. The glass in her uncle’s hand shattered. At the same moment, Elias’s men—who had infiltrated as "wedding staff"—locked the doors.

The room erupted. Seraphina didn't wait for Elias to protect her; she vaulted over the table, her velvet skirts flaring like a battle flag. She took down two guards with the brutal efficiency of a Thorne general, her movements a lethal dance.

Elias was a storm. He moved through the center of the room, clearing a path toward Marcus. When a guard dared to lung toward Seraphina’s exposed back, Elias didn't just shoot—he intercepted the man, catching his throat in a grip of iron.

"I told your people," Elias hissed as he slammed the guard into a stone pillar, "that even a scratch on her would be the end of your world."

He snapped the man's neck without breaking eye contact with Marcus.

They met at the head of the table, surrounding the trembling Uncle Marcus. Seraphina held a dagger to her uncle’s throat, while Elias stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, his presence an impenetrable wall.

"Kill him," Elias whispered in her ear. It wasn't a command; it was an offering. "Clean the House of Thorne, and I will burn the House of Oakhaven. By morning, there will be no one left to question who you belong to."

Seraphina looked at the man who had tried to kill her, then back at the "enemy" who was currently her only ally. She didn't flinch. She leaned back against Elias’s chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart against her spine.

"We belong to no one, Elias," she said, her voice steady as she slid the blade home. "We are the nightmare they whispered about."

As the room fell silent, Elias wrapped his arms around her, his suit stained with the blood of her enemies. He didn't let go. For the first time, the "Force" in the marriage wasn't coming from the treaty—it was the gravity pulling two monsters into the same orbit

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