Chapter 5 CHAPTER 5: Red Reign, and Black Consequences
By the time the car turned through the gilded gates of the Veyra estate, my stomach had twisted itself into a knot so tight it felt like it was cutting my breath in half. The mansion rose like a cathedral of glass and gold ahead of me—beautiful, cold, and merciless.
Every marble step felt like it echoed my failure… No dress... No Red Reign... No miracle to offer the woman who didn’t believe in forgiveness. My palms were damp against my sweater, still tingling faintly—the ghost of the slap I’d given Auren Draven burning hotter in my memory than the fear clawing at my ribs.
I kept replaying it over and over: the shock in his eyes, the arrogance in his mouth, the unbearable confidence of a man who thought the world bent for him. And then me—lunging forward like some feral thing and striking the one person Elara worshipped more than her own reflection. If she ever found out… no, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. I’d take the truth to my grave before I let her know I’d laid a hand on her golden obsession.
Kevin dropped me at the service entrance, and I stepped out like I was walking into an execution chamber. The sudden quiet of the back corridor swallowed me whole. Usually, the staff murmured or moved around this area like cautious ghosts, but now it felt abandoned. Or maybe it was just me—alone with the bone-deep dread crawling down my spine.
I clutched my empty hands tightly, wishing they held silk instead of fear. There was no excuse I could give Elara, no explanation she would accept. A dress being “misplaced” wasn’t a real reason in her world; it was an insult, a betrayal, a personal attack. She’d twist it that way. She always did. And underneath all of that, simmering quietly, was the humiliation from the boutique—the moment I’d stood barefoot in front of Auren Draven like a fool.
I could still hear his voice, feel the heat of his gaze like fingerprints I couldn’t scrub off. God, why did he have to smirk like that? Why did he have to look at me like he knew every secret I never wanted to tell?
My feet carried me up the hallway toward Elara’s wing, each step heavier than the last. My pulse hammered between my ears, counting down the moments before everything exploded. The house felt colder, somehow, like it already knew I had failed.
Portraits of Veyra ancestors stared down with judgmental eyes as I passed, their gilded frames throwing warped reflections of my anxious face back at me.
My chest tightened painfully when I reached the double doors leading into Elara’s dressing suite. Light spilled from the crack beneath the door.
She was awake. She was waiting. And she would see the truth the second I walked in: I didn’t have the dress. I had nothing but apologies she hated and excuses she would shred apart with the ease of someone slicing silk. I pressed a hand to the cool wall to steady myself, but the trembling wouldn’t stop. I’d failed before, but never like this. Never when her entire world hinged on one thing I couldn’t deliver.
I lifted my hand toward the handle, fingers shaking so badly I could barely close them. For a moment, I let my forehead rest against the door, breathing in shallow, shaky bursts.
Maybe she’d scream. Maybe she’d throw something. Maybe she’d fire me on the spot. But none of that terrified me as much as the possibility—the smallest, sharpest sliver of fear—that she might somehow find out who had been holding the dress.
Who I had slapped. Auren Draven returning tonight was already a storm gathering over this house; me losing his favorite color gown hours before his arrival was the kind of disaster fate liked to laugh at. I swallowed hard, pushed the door open…
Elara was already a storm when I stepped inside. The room looked like a battlefield of silk and diamonds—dresses flung across chairs, shoes scattered like casualties, makeup compacts cracked open on the vanity. She stood in the center of it all, hair pinned halfway up, lipstick smeared where she’d wiped it off in frustration, her breathing sharp and uneven.
“Where the hell is Kira?” she snapped at her reflection. “She was supposed to be here an hour ago—my curls are falling, my skin is blotchy, and everyone wants to sabotage me today.”
She caught sight of me in the mirror, and her entire body went still nd her eyes drifted down my empty hands slowly, like the movement itself offended her. “Where,” she whispered, “is the dress?”
I opened my mouth, but that was all she needed to see. A single breath of hesitation. Her face snapped into something feral. “Are you—are you kidding me?” she shrieked, grabbing the nearest object—an expensive glass bottle of serum—and hurling it across the room. It shattered against the wall inches from my head, glittering shards skittering across the marble.
“You stupid, useless girl! I sent you to get one thing. One thing!” Her voice pitched higher. “Red Reign, Sera! Not a novel! Not an inheritance! A dress!” She stalked toward me, her heels clacking like gunshots. “Where is it?!”
“I—I tried—”
“Don’t you dare say you tried!” she screamed, flinging a pair of stilettos so hard they slammed into the closet door behind me. “Trying means nothing. Effort means nothing. RESULTS are what matter! And you brought me nothing?” Her chest heaved as she jabbed a manicured finger toward my face. “Do you have any idea who is coming tonight? The Dravens. Auren. His family. His mother! And I—” Her voice cracked. She grabbed her hair with both hands, pulling at the strands as she spun away in a frantic circle. “I needed that dress to make him remember who I am. And you—you ruined everything!”
My heart beat so loudly it drowned out her words, my mind a blur of panic. If I told her the truth—that Auren had been the one holding the dress, that I had slapped him—she would destroy me. She would peel my skin from bone. She would make sure I never worked, never lived, never breathed in this city again. My mouth opened before I even realized I was making the choice.
“It was gone,” I heard myself say. My voice wasn’t steady. It was thin and cracking like old paper. “The dress was already sold. No one had it.”
Elara froze. Slowly, she turned back to me, her expression shuttering like a door slamming shut. The fury didn’t disappear—but it shifted, becoming something sharp, suspicious, dissecting.
“Sold?” she repeated. “Sold to who?” She stared at me with those icy, calculating eyes, the ones that could sniff out lies like bloodhounds. “That gown was a custom piece. Marina promised it would be there until seven. So who, Sera—who could possibly have bought it before I arrived?” She stepped closer. “Name the buyer.”
Every atom in my body screamed. But I couldn’t tell the truth. Not when it involved him. Not when it involved me. I forced myself to hold her gaze, even though my knees trembled. “They didn’t say,” I lied softly. “The staff only told me it had been purchased in a private sale earlier this morning. They didn’t give a name.” My pulse hammered so violently I thought she’d hear it. “They were apologizing nonstop. They said it was their mistake.”
For three agonizing seconds, Elara didn’t breathe. Then—just like that—her rage found a new target. “Those incompetent idiots,” she hissed, pacing fast enough to send her earrings swinging. “I swear, I’m going to sue that place. I’m going to drag Marina by her platinum ponytail and make her hand-sew me a new gown in blood.”
She reached for another makeup bottle but didn’t throw it—she only gripped it so tightly the plastic creaked. “Sold. Sold! To someone who doesn’t deserve it.” Her voice wobbled on the last word, the tremor of a woman terrified of losing control. “He’s coming tonight, Sera. Auren is coming. I needed that dress. I needed tonight to be perfect.”
I swallowed hard, the weight of my lie pressing heavy on my tongue. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. It was the only truth in the room. She didn’t look at me, didn’t respond. She just stared at her reflection with a hollow, shaking breath.
“Everything I’ve waited for… thirteen years… and now this.” Her shoulders sagged, and for a fleeting moment—barely a blink—I saw something raw beneath the cruelty. Fear. Desperation. A girl still chasing a boy who had never looked back. Then it vanished, replaced by her usual ice. “Get out,” she said quietly. Not screamed. Not thrown. Just… commanded. “Before I change my mind and fire you anyway.”
I backed toward the door, my legs weak, my pulse still racing. As I slipped out of the room, I heard her voice—low, trembling, almost breaking. “Tonight has to be perfect,” she whispered to herself. “I won’t lose him again.”
And for the first time since meeting him, I realized something bone-deep and terrifying:
Auren Draven was returning to a home already full of ghosts—and I had just become one more secret trapped between them.