Rebecca refused to believe Sebastian wouldn’t come. He had been here just yesterday with her medicine, walking her through every detail of her condition with his own mouth. Surely a man like that didn’t simply vanish overnight.
She sent someone straight to his practice to fetch him. He never showed. Instead, a message came back through his resident assistant, passed along by her own steward, and by the time the words reached Rebecca’s ears, her temper had already started to fray at the edges.
Sebastian’s message was short. There was no need to call for him again. What he had seen in this house had left a sour taste in his mouth, and treating people who lacked any decency would only shorten his own life. He had no interest in dying early over the likes of them.
Rebecca’s face went red with fury. "Cassandra did this. She stopped Sebastian from treating me, I know it. I never thought she had that kind of cruelty in her." Her voice cracked with disbelief. "When Adrian brought her home, I thought she was gentle, obedient, everything a good wife should be. Not once in the whole year she lived under this roof did I see a hint of this in her. And now she’s trying to kill me. Without that medicine, I don’t know how much longer I have."
Jonathan sat through all of it without a word, though the tightness in his jaw said enough. He had assumed his daughter-in-law’s stubbornness would pass on its own, the way most things did in this house, but cutting off Rebecca’s medicine crossed a line he hadn’t expected her to cross.
"Go find your brother," he told Bryan. "Tell him to get his wife under control before she kills your mother."
"Got it." Bryan was out the door before the sentence had fully landed. He had liked his sister-in-law once. He wasn’t sure what to call this version of her.
Serena, meanwhile, marched straight for Grace Mansion and found the doors barred shut against her. She stood on the step with her face burning and shouted loud enough for the whole courtyard to hear.
"Cassandra! Get out here right now!" She didn’t wait for an answer. "No wonder my brother fell for Aurora instead of you. She doesn’t play these little games. You deserve every bit of the contempt he has for you now. Do you think locking a door will save you? This is still Valor Estate. Hide in there for the rest of your miserable life if you want, but you’ll pay for what you did to our mother."
From behind the closed doors, Lulu’s voice came back steady and unbothered. "Lady Serena, weren’t you going to return the things my lady gave you? Perhaps start there before you say another word."
"Why should I? A gift is a gift. Nobody takes those back."
That wasn’t the whole truth, and Serena knew it. She’d meant to return every piece before coming here, until she’d actually looked through her jewelry box and found that nearly everything worth wearing had come from Cassandra’s hand. Give it all back, and she’d be left with plain clothes and empty fingers. She wasn’t willing to live like that, not for anyone’s principles.
"There’s no rule against keeping a gift," Lulu said calmly, "but there’s also no excuse for insulting the person who gave it to you."
Serena had nothing ready to throw back at that. "Just wait until my brother gets home. He’ll deal with you," she snapped instead, and stormed off before anyone could answer.
Inside, Lulu was still fuming. "A house full of people who never have enough," she muttered, pacing back into Cassandra’s room. "You were right, my lady. Anywhere would be better than this place. Why hasn’t the Alpha’s decree for the divorce come through yet?"
Cassandra didn’t answer right away. She crossed the room, jumped lightly onto the edge of the cabinet, and came back down with a small box in her hands, landing without a sound.
Inside sat a red whip she hadn’t touched in years, a parting gift from her old master back at Meadow Ridge. She hadn’t so much as looked at it since marrying into the Warren family. These days her combat training barely amounted to more than a few quiet stretches each morning, nothing that would draw notice.
"My lady, are you planning to fight someone?" Lulu had spent years at Meadow Ridge alongside her before either of them ever set foot in Valor Estate, and she knew exactly what Cassandra had once been capable of.
"No. I just wanted to see it again." Cassandra ran her fingers along the worn leather. She was still in mourning for her family, and even if a fight found her, this wasn’t a weapon she’d allow herself to use yet. "Once we leave this house, we’ll go to Meadow Ridge. I want to see my master again."
"That sounds wonderful." Lulu’s whole face brightened. "Everyone there always treated you like something precious, my lady."
Cassandra set the whip back in its box, then set the box on the table instead of returning it to the cabinet. There was no reason to put it away again. Not when she meant to carry it with her soon.
"I hope my mother wouldn’t be disappointed in me," she said quietly. "I did marry him. He’s the one who let me down, not the other way around."
Lulu’s eyes went glassy. "If your mother could see everything they’ve done to you here, she wouldn’t blame you at all. She’d be angry at every last one of them."
Cassandra let out a small, tired breath. "Marriage and children were never really meant to be the whole of a Sinclair woman’s life."
"They don’t know what they had in you." Lulu sniffled, wiping at her nose. "When it comes to strategy or combat, Aurora isn’t even close to you. You only ended up here because your parents never wanted you anywhere near a battlefield. If you’d been allowed to fight, Aurora wouldn’t be worth mentioning in the same breath as you."
Cassandra smiled at that, warm and a little amused. "I’m always perfect in your eyes, aren’t I?"
"Always," Lulu said, lifting her chin, her nose still pink from crying.