Chapter 145: Threads of Separation
The Maxwell – Lioré's Manoir des Ombres was a place steeped in dignified silence, its vast, echoing halls lined with cold stone and older ghosts. Each archway and oil portrait hummed with legacy, with secrets pressed into velvet wallpaper and beneath the lacquer of ancient oak. This was not a home, but a crucible — designed not for comfort, but for transformation. And for Eva, it had become a world both cage and proving ground.
Morning came like a blade — swift, demanding, unrelenting.
"Get up. You're late."
Her Papa's voice cut through the quiet, even when she wasn't late. She never was.
Eva rose before the dawn touched the frost - laced windows, spine straight, eyes blank with discipline. Her slippers made no sound as she moved through the corridors, hair coiled into the tight twist Papa Reginald preferred — neat, efficient, devoid of softness.
By sunrise, she was already on the mat, body bent under the weight of drills designed for adults. No less than two hundred push - ups before breakfast. Weighted sprints down the flagstone courtyard. Sparring against a full - grown man, her limbs trembling under the strain, breath tearing from her throat.
"You call that a block?" Reginald barked, watching her knees buckle under the force of another blow. "You're telegraphing. Again."
Her arms burned. Blood leaked from split knuckles, smeared across her palms like war paint.
"I'm sorry, Papa."
"Sorry is for the weak. You were born to endure more than this."
She didn't collapse. Not even when her body begged for reprieve. She pushed through the drills until her vision blurred and her muscles screamed. A child of seven trained like a soldier of twenty - seven. But Eva bore it without protest, because she was his daughter — and his legacy had no room for less.
Later, in the war room — a once - grand study overrun by charts, dossiers, and foreign policy reports — she memorized treaties and ledgers until numbers danced behind her eyes. Tutors tested her until her answers came in reflex. Every slip, every hesitation, was met with Reginald's cold judgment.
"You think memorization is mastery?" he snapped once after she hesitated mid-recitation. "You lack conviction. Power isn't information. It's control. Until you understand that, you're nothing but a vessel waiting to be broken."
"I understand, Papa," she replied, though the tremor in her legs betrayed her exhaustion.
"No. You accept. You do not understand. Not yet."
By the time night wrapped its long arms around the estate, she was often curled on a bench behind the western wing, her small frame swallowed by mist and aching silence. That's when her phone lit up.
Ina 💐 calling…
She answered on the first ring.
Seraphina's face burst across the screen, half - mischief and full concern. Her pout was theatrical. "I haven't received a bento from my little moonbeam in days. Have I been forsaken?"
Eva exhaled a laugh, her voice hoarse. "That's not fair."
"No? Then why do you look like you've been trampled by a herd of elk?"
"Just… training. My papa's expectations are… intense."
Seraphina's teasing softened. She tilted the camera slightly, revealing her lap beneath the glow of fairy lights. "Come here."
Eva's ears turned red. She ducked her head.
"Oh? Are you blushing?" Seraphina smirked. "Your ears say yes."
"You're mean," Eva murmured, hiding her face.
"I'm in love," Seraphina corrected gently. "And you're mine."
Somewhere deep in the estate, shadows flickered with different weight.
Vivienne's hand slid across Evelyn's lower back as they disappeared into the private wing behind heavy drapes. They moved without hurry, the air between them warm with familiarity and want.
"You know we should be discussing strategy," Evelyn murmured, pushing Vivienne back against the doorframe.
Vivienne's fingers curled around the silk belt of Evelyn's robe. "Darling… this is strategy."
The kiss came first — quiet, purposeful, silencing every caution. Then hands, then breath, then the slow rekindling of a fire never truly extinguished. In the spaces where duty demanded silence, love carved out its own defiant path.
Meanwhile, Eva's days blurred into one another. Mornings of diplomatic rhetoric, noons of swordplay and bruises, afternoons of linguistic drills and psychological simulations. At night, Reginald reviewed her performance with surgical cruelty.
"You speak like a child," he told her after a mock debate. "You want to sway hearts. I want you to control outcomes."
"I'm trying."
"Then try harder. Because your enemies won't wait for you to understand."
And still, night after night, she carved time from the wreckage of her hours to reach the one person who saw past the bloodline.
Their calls were sacred.
Seraphina always appeared in soft light, curls undone, eyes fierce and kind.
"I know you're hiding something," she said one night, her smile gone, replaced by quiet intensity.
Eva's gaze dropped. "It's nothing."
"You flinch when I say your name. You pause when I ask about your family."
Eva's voice caught in her throat.
"I'm just tired, Ina."
A long silence.
"I believe you," Seraphina whispered. "But one day, you'll tell me everything."
Eva nodded slowly. "And if you hate me after?"
"I never could."
Later that night, Eva lay in bed, her body trembling from strain, her thoughts a storm she couldn't quiet. The unopened letter from the Symposium sat on her desk, its seal untouched. She stared at it, the candlelight making the wax glisten like blood.
She didn't dare open it. Not yet.
Morning arrived again like a judgment.
Reginald's voice rang out across the mat. "You're falling behind."
"No, sir."
"You call that precision? Pathetic."
She hit the floor. Hard. Picked herself up again. Kept going.
Because she wasn't just fighting for legacy. She was fighting to be seen.
Later, while a silent medic cleaned her hands and wrapped gauze around her knuckles, Eva retreated to the eastern library. The smell of parchment and lavender clung to the air. She was bone-tired. Hollow.
Vivienne entered without knocking.
"You're burning yourself out," she said, approaching softly. "You're trying to earn something he won't give."
Eva stared at the fire. "I can't afford to be weak."
"Strength isn't in silence," Vivienne said. "It's in choosing who holds your truth."
"He doesn't see me."
Vivienne touched her cheek gently. "He does. He just doesn't know how to love what he sees."
Eva looked up at her. "Then what do I do?"
"You survive. You lean on the people who do see you."
That night, Seraphina greeted her with a sleepy smile.
"I missed your face."
"You keep me together," Eva whispered.
"I know you're falling apart."
Eva didn't respond.
"I'll hold the pieces," Seraphina said, tapping her lap. "Pretend. Just for a moment."
Eva obeyed. Laid her head on her arms and imagined.
"I'll come back to you," she whispered.
"You better. Or I'm coming to France and dragging you home."
"You don't even know where I am."
"I'll find you. I'm your little wife, remember? Nothing keeps me from you."
Eva's cheeks burned. She closed her eyes.
"I love you."
In the quiet halls beyond her room, Evelyn stood in candlelight, eyes on the sealed letter she hadn't given Eva—the one with the truth of her parentage, of the Lioré bloodline.
Vivienne came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist.
"She'll know soon," Evelyn whispered.
"She's not ready."
"She'll have to be."
Their lips met in silence.
And in another room, a girl barely past childhood bled and dreamed in equal measure — held together by the voice on the other end of the line.