Chapter 218

Chapter 218

Blood still seeped from Zane's forehead. His knees buckled, unable to straighten. His uniform was smeared with dirt and dust from the bluestone.

Caspian walked to his parents' side and bent slightly, speaking in the low tone he only used in private. "Dad. Mom. I was too soft before. My indulgence let all of this happen. From now on, I'll do everything I can to make it up to Sera."

Wesley looked at him, silent for a moment, then reached out and patted his shoulder.

The pressure wasn't heavy, but Caspian felt the weight his father's palm carried.

Valencia said nothing. She only dried the tears at the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief and looked up at him.

She remembered the time at the dinner table when she'd called Caspian out for not caring about Seraphine — and it was Seraphine who'd smoothed things over, saying, "Thanks for your asking." Back then, Valencia had felt this family was falling apart, everyone keeping a ledger no one could ever balance.

But now, watching Caspian stand before her and say "I'll do everything I can to make it up to her," she felt that maybe this family could still be pieced back together. Slowly.

She reached out and straightened his coat collar. The touch was light, but Caspian noticed the red marks still lingering on her fingertips — left from the slaps.

She didn't say anything more. She just patted his chest, then turned and walked back into the Windsor Manor.

---

Zane was loaded into the car parked outside the main gate.

The door shutting echoed through the quiet dusk — heavy, final.

Ondine knelt on the bluestone, two vivid handprints glowing on her cheeks. The thread of blood at the corner of her mouth had dried in the evening wind, hardened into a dark red line against her skin.

Her knees had gone numb against the stone. Her calves had lost all feeling. But she didn't stand.

She lifted her eyes toward the door at the top of those steps — the door she'd called 'home' for twenty years.

Valencia had already turned and gone back inside. Wesley stood on the steps, watching Zane being taken to the car in silence. He didn't look at her.

Caspian stood beside his parents, speaking in low tones to his assistant. He didn't look at her either.

Kieran stood by the stone table, his expression tangled and lost — as if he wanted to say something but ultimately couldn't form the words.

Clayton held Valencia's shoulder, swept one cool, detached glance in Ondine's direction, then looked away.

No one was looking at her anymore.

Not a single person spared another glance at the girl kneeling on the bluestone.

She had spent twenty years securing her place in this family — tears, fragility, and lies holding every scrap of affection together.

Now every mask had shattered. None of it had been real.

The blood wasn't hers. The family wasn't hers. Even Zane — the old butler who'd covered for her since childhood — hadn't done it out of loyalty. He'd done it because she was his daughter.

She had lived inside a lie. From beginning to end. From birth to this very moment.

She braced her hands against the ground and pushed herself up.

Her knees buckled from kneeling too long, a wave of pins and needles shooting through her calves the instant she straightened. Her body swayed. She grabbed the portico column to steady herself.

Then she turned and walked toward the gate without a word. Her steps were slow, each one deliberate, as though she were relearning how to walk.

The streetlamps along the drive flickered on one by one in the gathering dark, stretching a long, solitary shadow behind her.

No one stopped her at the gate. No one walked her out.

As she stepped over the threshold, her foot landed on the same piece of bluestone she'd first touched twenty years ago, when Wesley carried her through this door as an infant.

But then, she had been a baby cradled in everyone's hands. Now, she was a stranger stripped of every identity by the truth.

She walked along the sycamore-lined lane with no direction, no destination. She didn't know where to go. Didn't know where she could go.

Every asset under her name had been frozen. The Windsor family had severed ties completely.

All she had left was a phone and less than a few hundred dollars in her pocket. On her feet were the same worn flats she'd had on since the racetrack, a fragment of sycamore leaf still clinging to the toe.

---

Rapid footsteps sounded behind her.

Kieran came running from the end of the lane, his dress shoes striking the stone path in urgent, heavy beats.

He'd sprinted the whole way, breathing hard, a thin sheen of sweat across his forehead.

He caught up to her and reached for her arm.

Ondine spun around and wrenched free of his grip. She was shattered — completely, finally broken open. Every ounce of anguish and despair she'd choked down all night erupted at once.

She screamed at him, eyes brimming, her voice raw and splintering.

"Don't touch me! I'm nothing now! Did you hear what they said? Twenty years ago — it was all a lie. I was never part of the Windsor family. I'm not your sister anymore!

All that truth, all those things I did — you heard every word. The drugging, the arson, the kidnapping, the poisoning — all of it was me! Why did you follow me? Go. Stay away from me!"

Her shoulders heaved violently. The last sentence tore out of her like a scream.

"Why do you still care..."

Her voice echoed through the lane, bouncing off the walls before the evening wind carried the final syllable away.

She was certain he wouldn't follow. Certain that after hearing everything, he'd turn and leave like everyone else.

Kieran didn't step back.

He stepped forward, pulled her into his arms, and locked them tight around her trembling back.

She fought against him, fists pressed to his chest — not hard, but each strike carrying the blind desperation of someone with nowhere left to fall.

He didn't let go. He only tightened his hold, lowered his head, and spoke a single sentence against her ear.

His voice was low and deliberate — nothing like the furious roar he'd aimed at Caspian in the courtyard. "Ondi, I know we don't share blood. I know you're not my real sister. And there isn't a single part of me that's sorry about it."

Ondine went rigid.

Her fists froze against his chest. Her body stilled completely in his arms.

She lifted her face slowly, gazing up at him through blurred, tear-soaked eyes — bewildered, disbelieving. "What do you mean?"

Kieran loosened his hold just enough to frame her shoulders with both hands, his gaze fixed on hers — steady, certain, without a trace of humor.

"I've been lying to myself for years, telling myself what I felt for you was just a brother looking out for his little sister. Today, watching the truth come out, I finally see my own heart for what it is.

What I feel for you was never brotherly. It's the way a man feels about a woman. Ondi, stop fighting it. Be with me. I'll take you away from here."

Ondine stared at him, frozen. In those red, tear-swollen eyes, a flicker of pure disbelief.

She stepped back half a pace on instinct, her lips parting, his name falling from them before she could think. "Kieran..."