Chapter 2 The Proximity Rule
The washroom was pitch black, steam still clinging to the air, and I could barely see Rune’s outline in front of me. His grip tightened on my arm like a clamp.
“Don’t move,” he murmured, voice low and rough, almost like he was holding something back. “Stay behind me.”
“I heard someone at the door,” I whispered.
“I know,” he breathed. “Stay still.”
The doorknob creaked again, slow and deliberate, like someone testing the lock. I pressed fully against Rune’s back, his skin still damp from the broken steam heat. He didn’t flinch. He shifted slightly, positioning himself between me and the sound.
“Rune,” I whispered, “someone is out there.”
“I said don’t move,” he said again, calm but tense, like he was listening to something only he could detect.
The doorknob stopped. Silence expanded, thick enough to choke on.
Then a cold voice sliced right through it.
“Well this is unnecessarily dramatic.”
Kael.
Rune exhaled sharply, releasing my arm. “You’re late. And you brought an audience.”
Kael pushed the door open, the dim hall behind him making his figure look like a shadow in a suit. He arched an eyebrow at the sight of the two of us in darkness.
“Rune, Mrs Gable is downstairs threatening your bloodline for shorting the circuit again. You know better than to run the steam and the heat lamps at the same time.” His eyes flicked to me, unimpressed. “Lyra, why are you always disheveled when I find you. Go upstairs. You’re dripping on the tiles.”
“Someone was just here,” I said quickly. “Someone touched the doorknob.”
“Or maybe,” Kael said, glancing at the knob with clinical boredom, “the house breathed. Or a rodent developed opposable thumbs. Go. Attic. Now.”
Rune stepped forward. “There was someone, Kael.”
“Then you should have caught them,” Kael shot back. “You’re the one with the enhanced senses. Not human.” His hand flicked toward me like I was lint on his sleeve. “Lyra, sixty seconds or I’ll schedule you to mop the eastern wing. With a toothbrush. Move.”
I didn’t wait. I grabbed my valise and bolted up the narrow service stairs.
I pushed the door shut behind me, the hollow, wooden thud echoing like a mockery, because the flimsy slab didn’t feel capable of locking anything out—cold, fear, humiliation, none of it—and I didn’t even try to calm my breathing as I stripped the wine-soaked dress off my skin, the sticky, dried crimson stain crawling down the fabric like Seraphina’s signature, her cruelty preserved in cloth.
I tossed the dress into a corner and knelt beside my tiny, worn valise, pushing my fingers past the thin stack of folded clothes until they brushed the soft velvet pouch. I pulled it out, loosened the strings, and the tarnished silver locket landed in my palm with the cold weight of a memory I never asked to keep but couldn’t bear to lose. My mother’s last lucid gift. My last piece of a life untouched by this house.
I fastened it around my neck. It settled over my sternum like an anchor.
Then came the knock—no, not a knock. An order.
“Lyra. You are summoned.”
Mrs. Gable’s voice was crisp, clipped, each syllable sharp enough to cut.
I dragged on a pair of too-loose trousers and a plain shirt, then followed her through the winding corridors until the air shifted from dust to polish, from musty neglect to the scent of power and polished mahogany.
Lord Thorne’s study was enormous, cavernous, swallowing sound and breath alike. He sat behind a desk that looked older than my entire bloodline. Caspian stood near the fireplace, the heat behind him doing nothing to soften his expression.
“Sit,” Lord Thorne commanded.
I obeyed.
“I’ll be brief,” he said, though his tone suggested he enjoyed dragging things out. “Your mother made us promise to keep you safe until you reach legal independence. We honor the promise. Not the person who made it.”
His indifference toward her hit harder than the words themselves, but I kept my focus on the grain of the desk.
“This house runs on rules,” he continued. “You will follow them, or you will be removed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rule One: Invisibility. You are to be unseen, unheard, and forgotten. You use service entrances only. You do not cross into the east wing. You freeze and step aside when Thorne approaches. We tolerate your presence. We do not invite it.”
Caspian shifted slightly, and the small sound somehow made the statement feel even harsher.
“Rule Two: Silence. You speak only when addressed. Keep your answers short. You do not offer stories, feelings, or unnecessary commentary.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Rule Three: Containment. You are tutored in-house. You will not attend the Academy. You do not leave the grounds without my written permission. No socializing. No wandering. No exceptions.”
My chest tightened, the pressure in my skull building, throbbing—the fever starting to stir.
“No questions?” he asked, already daring me to challenge him.
“No, sir.”
“Good. Caspian will handle the rest. Leave.”
I stood, but Caspian’s voice cut through the room like a blade.
“Lyra. Look at me.”
I met his eyes—cold, sharp, assessing.
“Privacy is everything in this family,” he said. “If you repeat anything you hear, misunderstand, or even imagine, you lose protection. Immediately.”
“I don’t want your secrets,” I replied, the words rasping out before I could filter them.
“Then behave in ways that prove that,” he said, already dismissing me. “Go.”
I left.
The next day was a waking prison. My attic room baked beneath the small, cracked skylight, and the tutor—Ms. Ellard, a woman so stiff she seemed carved from stone—spoke Latin at me for nearly two hours before shifting to equations that made my eyes blur. The throbbing in my temples grew sharper, hotter, deeper, the fever crawling upward like a rising tide.
Reading was the only thing that ever calmed the pounding.
Which meant, despite Rule One, Rule Two, and Rule Three, I slipped into the hallway during staff break and headed toward the forbidden library.
The carved oak doors loomed like guardians of an ancient secret. I pushed them open and stepped into a cathedral of books, the air warm with dust and leather, shafts of golden light catching the motes drifting lazily above the endless rows of shelves.
I wandered between the aisles until a thick volume titled Mythos of the Lesser Gods caught my eye, perched far above my reach. I stretched onto my toes, fingers brushing the spine—
And another hand reached for it from the other side at the exact same moment.
I stumbled, colliding with a solid wall of heat and muscle and anger wrapped in a dark suit.
Caspian.
He caught the falling book effortlessly, and my body froze where I had accidentally pressed against his arm, the proximity so abrupt and overwhelming that for a heartbeat I forgot how to move.
Then the fever surged—white, blinding, suffocating.
I jerked back.
His expression snapped from surprise to rage with terrifying speed.
“What the hell are you doing here, Lyra?” he demanded, his voice low, sharp, vibrating with a fury that felt far too personal.
“I needed a book,” I managed, voice cracking as the pain behind my eyes flared hotter.
“You were told to stay out of the main residence,” he shot back, stepping forward. “You think a dying woman’s sentimental request gives you access to our space?”
“It’s a library,” I whispered, pressing a hand to my forehead. “I wasn’t plotting anything—I just needed a distraction.”
His gaze dropped to the silver locket on my chest.
His eyes darkened.
“A distraction,” he echoed, stepping closer until my back hit the bookshelf. “That’s exactly the problem.”
He braced his hand beside my head, his arm caging me without touching me, yet the air between us felt electric and volatile.
“You’re burning,” he said quietly—not with concern, but with accusation. “Look at you. Can’t even stand without swaying, and yet you wander into places you don’t belong.”
“I’m leaving,” I whispered, breath catching.
“You are always leaving,” he said. “That’s all you do. Fade in, fade out. A shadow in a house that doesn’t want you.”
I tried to edge away, but his presence swallowed every inch around me.
“We are siblings in name only,” he hissed. “A technicality. Nothing more. Don’t confuse the word for something it isn’t.”
He stepped back finally, eyes still burning.
“If I find you in any primary room again, you won’t like the consequences.”
He tossed the book onto the table and walked away without looking back.
I fled the library, dizzy, vision swimming, my knees buckling as I stumbled up the servants’ stairs.
By the time I collapsed on the narrow cot in my attic room, the fever was raging fully, my skin burning, my body too heavy to move. Hours passed like blurry waves, and when night finally seeped in through the cracked skylight, I hovered on the edge of sleep—barely conscious, barely breathing.
Then something shifted.
A heavy sound. A weight settling.
Right outside my door.
My eyes snapped open.
I pushed myself off the bed, each step toward the door slow and trembling, and pressed my ear against the thin wood.
Silence.
But not empty.
Alive.
I lowered myself to the floor and peered through the narrow gap beneath the door.
My breath caught in my throat.
A massive shape curled on the floor.
Broad shoulders. Dark muscles. A tattoo winding down a powerful arm.
Rune.
The silent one. The dangerous one. The one who had watched me in the bathroom like he was reading my soul without saying a single word.
Now he lay directly outside my door, his enormous frame blocking the only exit, his breathing slow and steady and terrifyingly deliberate.
Guarding it.
Or guarding me.
Or trapping me.
I didn’t move.
I didn’t breathe.
I stayed kneeling there, frozen, staring through the gap at the one Thorne brother no one dared to question—now sleeping like a monstrous sentinel outside my attic.
And for the first time since entering this house, I realized I wasn’t just isolated.
I was claimed.
By someone who had never spoken a word to me.
