FIFTY SEVEN

FIFTY SEVEN
RONAN’S POV
I found Mother in her private chamber, the one she rarely allowed anyone to enter. The door stood ajar which to me was already a warning sign. Mother never left doors open.
"Mother?" I called, pushing the door wider.
The scene inside froze me. Blood speckled the hardwood floor. Ash dusted the surfaces like dirty snow. And Mother—always composed, always controlling—paced the room like a trapped animal. Her usual mask had cracked, revealing raw panic underneath.
Her head snapped up. "Ronan."
"What happened?" I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. The air felt wrong. It was charged and thick with the metallic scent of blood and something else. Something primal that made my wolf stir restlessly beneath my skin.
"She's gone." Mother's voice cracked. "Riona is gone."
"Your servant?" I scanned the room again, taking in details I'd missed at first glance. A silver bracelet reduced to almost nothing on the side table. Scorch marks on the wall. Signs of a struggle or… A fight? “What is so special about a servant leaving? More importantly, what happened here?”
"What does that have to do with anything?" Mother hissed, but her eyes darted away from mine. Which meant she was going to lie or avoid the truth as much as she could. She was lying.
"This room reeks of blood lust," I said quietly. "And magic."
Mother stopped pacing. Her shoulders slumped in defeat—another sight I'd never witnessed before. Something was deeply wrong.
"Riona wasn't just a servant," she admitted, a rarity for her. "She was a witch. She was supposed to help us."
I raised an eyebrow. "Help us how, exactly?"
"She made the concoction." Mother's voice dropped to a whisper. "The one that fakes mate bonds."
The implication hit me hard. I always wondered why the Omega stuck like glue with my mother. But things were starting to make so much sense now.
"She's done so much for us," Mother continued, her composure returning slightly. "So much in the shadows. And her leaving now, at such a critical time..." She shook her head. "It spells trouble for us. Big trouble."
I studied her face, seeing the cracks in her perfect facade. "I feel like there's more you're not telling me."
Mother laughed. It was a hollow, desperate sound. "The spells she helps me with aren't ones we can buy with money, Ronan. They're forbidden." She met my eyes directly. "With her gone, we'll be kicked out of Silvercrest even faster than I feared."
"Why would that happen?" I asked, though dread pooled in my stomach. Something told me I didn't want to hear the answer.
Mother looked at me for a long moment. "Can't you figure it out already?" Her voice hardened. "If the plan was to fake a mate bond for you and that girl, what makes you think I haven't done it before?"
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet. "What?"
"With me and your father," she said, eyes glittering with a dangerous light, "there was no match of fate. I made that happen. So I could give us this life."
The foundation of my world cracked. Everything I knew—everything I'd believed—shifted sideways.
Though I reckoned Ewan would not be surprised. He would see this as mother’s usual antics.
Mother chuckled darkly. "Now Riona is going to shatter that spell. She gave me three days, but who knows what that psychotic witch is thinking? She could act now."
I needed to sit down, but I remained standing. Weakness wasn't an option. Never had been. "So what do we do?"
"We need to secure the O'Callahan girl as quickly as possible." Mother gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin. "Time is the one thing we don't have right now."
"I need time," I said. "Getting close to Ciara isn't something I can force overnight."
"The academy is a haven of scandal," Mother hissed. "Take away her dignity and womanhood if you must. But she must return not as Darragh Byrne's but yours."
My stomach twisted. I'd planned to seduce Ciara, to manipulate her—but Mother's words suggested something darker. Something I wasn't sure I could do, even for our family's survival.
"You also have to do one thing for me," she added, her voice eerily calm now.
"What else could that be?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"Saraphina Maychild is Riona's biological daughter."
I blinked, struggling to process this new information. "What?"
Saraphina—the girl I'd been hoping to use to get information about Darragh. The girl who never smiled and looked like she would not trust a word that came out of my mouth. The girl who'd stopped answering my calls. She was Riona’s daughter?
“Do you think she could be a witch?”
"Forget that," Mother waved dismissively. "The important thing... The most important thing I can do right now is to ensure our survival somehow and bind us to Riona."
She paced again, fingers twitching at her sides. "The one spell I can buy with a price from any shady witch of the mill is binding Saraphina's life and my life into one single thread."
Horror crawled up my spine. "Why would you do that?"
Mother held my face between her hands, her touch cold. "Stupid, to buy us more time, of course." Her voice dipped lower. "Just in case you fail us."
"I won't fail," I said firmly, though my mind raced with the implications of everything she'd revealed.
She smiled—that familiar, calculating smile that had guided my life since childhood. "That's my boy." Her hands dropped from my face. "And you cannot allow your brother to mess this up this time around."
The mention of Ewan sent a jolt through me. Our conversation in the garden still lingered in my mind. Hhis accusations… His pain…
"You have to give the twisted love you have for one another a rest," Mother continued, "and put in the work. For our family. For him." Her lip curled slightly. "Especially weak and pathetic Ewan."
Anger flared in my chest at her dismissal of my brother. But I kept my face neutral, my voice steady. "I understand."
I left Mother's room with my thoughts in chaos. The hall stretched before me, vast and empty, much like the hole that had opened inside me. My father wasn't Mother's fated mate. Our position in Silvercrest—everything we had—was indeed built on lies and witchcraft.
And now she wanted me to not just seduce Ciara, but destroy her. To use Saraphina even more callously than I already planned to do. To dismiss Ewan's concerns and feelings.
I entered my room and locked the door behind me. My reflection in the mirror looked the same—the perfect heir, the dutiful son. But something had changed inside me. A line I wasn't sure I could cross stood before me.
I thought of Ewan's words in the garden. "Do you not want more in life, brother? Here we are plotting the ruin of some girl's life. How is that 'more'?"
But what choice did I have? If Riona shattered Mother's spell, we would lose everything. Father would cast us out when he learned the truth. Luna Marion would make sure we never recovered.
I sat on the edge of my bed, head in my hands. Mother was right about one thing—time was running out. I needed to make a decision. I needed to choose a path.
The twisted part was, I already knew which one I'd take. The same path I always took when faced with moral dilemmas: the one that ensured our family's survival. The one that protected Ewan, even if he hated me for it.
It has to be done, I told myself, trying to ignore the voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my brother's. There's no other way.
This was for me. This was for Ewan. Especially Ewan.