Chapter Seventeen – Ash Beneath Silk
The morning after Asa's performance, the Leclair estate wore a strange silence, as if the walls themselves were digesting what had been sung.
Nuria woke early. The sheets beside her were cold.
Down the corridor, Asa sat alone in the rosewood study, shirtless, elbows on the armrest, eyes sunk into the shadows of the fireplace. He hadn't slept. Not really. His hands bore the faint red marks of clenched fists.
He didn't acknowledge Nuria's footsteps, but he felt them. Heard them in the pause of her breath. Smelled her citrus shampoo in the soft draft from the open door.
"Asa?"
"Go back to bed."
"I—"
"I said go."
The edge in his voice was dull, but it cut just the same.
---
By breakfast, the shift had settled like dust over everything. Asa wasn't cruel. Just distant. Methodical. No longer the half-smiling, soft-eyed husband from the wedding, nor the haunted man from the piano bench.
He sat at the opposite end of the head of the long table with a quietness that demanded obedience.
When Celeste asked how he slept, he ignored her. When Genevieve complimented the roses in the east wing, he merely nodded. Nuria, seated beside him, barely breathed.
Vivienne watched him with narrowed eyes.
At the far end of the table, Mr. Dorian Leclair finally cleared his throat.
He was everything people said he was: elegant, polished, and enigmatic. His eyes missed nothing, yet he spoke with a calm that settled into a room like silk. "Asa," he said with a warm, paternal smile, "your performance last night… remarkable. The entire house felt it."
Asa said nothing.
Dorian didn't press. He simply nodded, then turned to the others. "I do hope you're all enjoying your stay. It's rare to have so much of the family under one roof."
"Almost like a second wedding," said a cousin brightly.
Dorian chuckled—low and velveted. "Exactly that."
---
After the meal, Vivienne caught Asa alone near the garden terrace, trimming back an orchid with a precision that bordered on surgical.
"You're colder," she said softly.
He didn't look at her. "Observation or complaint?"
"An ache," she replied. "And a warning. People here notice shifts, Asa. And wolves love the scent of blood."
He clipped a bloom clean off the stem.
"I'm not bleeding."
She tilted her head. "A mother knows. Just… don't push too far and forget who you are in the silence."
A long pause.
"Is that what you did?
Also, you aren't even my real mom, you know," he murmured.
Vivienne's expression hardened just slightly—then vanished. She kissed the top of his head.
"Firstly, I married your adoptive father, didn't I?
And also, mine was about leaving behind everything I knew—my name, my country, my mother's mourning face. I ran off with a man the world warned me against. I chose love over lineage… and that choice cost me a family I never got back."
She looked at him then—truly looked. "So no, I might not be your real mother by blood, Asa. But I understand what it means to lose yourself for something or someone you believe in. I just hope you're not doing the same, but in a whole other different way that you would end up deeply regretting.
In my defence, I followed your dad who was by the way alive and breathing, because I knew at the end of the day I couldn't be without him even though deep down I loved my family too.
Now tell me Asa, what's your defence here? What is your excuse for hurting yourself and the woman you seem to love? And at the end of the day after choosing your dead family, can you live with yourself knowing the woman you love is out of your life? Do you think you would be happy you took revenge for your family and lost someone who could have been your family, if you had let it be?"
Behind her, Mr. Leclair had walked quietly into the terrace, hands folded behind his back. He waited a respectful moment, then spoke with that smooth, silk-draped voice.
"I trust you're both enjoying the orchids?"
Vivienne smiled. "We are."
Dorian glanced between them. "It's good to tend to what blooms… especially the ones with thorns."
Asa didn't meet his eyes, but something in his jaw twitched. Mr. Leclair offered him a friendly pat on the shoulder before walking away.
---
Meanwhile, Nuria found herself cornered more than once.
Genevieve, during a walk through the winter garden, said, "I hope you don't mind how blunt Celeste is. She gets possessive of family friends. Especially ones she once fantasised about marrying."
Nuria kept her voice even. "Is that supposed to bother me?"
Genevieve laughed, rich and low. "Only if you're as fragile as you look.
But gosh, sometimes that girl gets on my nerves with her never-ending words," she murmured to herself as she continued to walk.
Later, in the west library, Celeste offered her a glass of something sparkling.
"You're out of place here," she said lightly. "But that's not always a bad thing. It makes you easier to spot."
Nuria blinked. "Easier to spot, or easier to hunt?"
Celeste smiled. "Both."
---
Unbeknownst to her, Asa had heard it all.
When a pair of second cousins whispered about how "oddly quiet the new bride is," Asa intercepted them in the hallway. The conversation died when his shadow fell across the marble.
"She's quiet because she listens," he said flatly. "Unlike some who only know how to talk."
The men stammered, trying to smooth over the moment.
"And if I hear her name in your mouths again, it won't just be talk you lose."
He turned and left before they could respond—cold, decisive.
---
By afternoon, Vivienne found Nuria in the conservatory, staring at a pale canary in a glass cage. Her fingers trembled near the edge of the velvet armrest.
"My dear," Vivienne said gently. "You've barely said a word today."
"I'm listening."
Vivienne smiled. "That's what Asa used to do. Until he learned silence could be used as a shield."
Nuria finally looked up. "Do you think he's shielding himself... from me?"
Vivienne's voice was quiet. "From pain. Which sometimes includes the ones we love."
A pause.
"You know he once disappeared for three days at seventeen. No note. No calls. When he returned, he'd carved piano keys into the bark of a tree behind the estate. Hundreds of them. Bleeding fingers. No one dared ask why."
Nuria swallowed.
"I'm not asking why either," she said.
Vivienne reached out and covered Nuria's hand.
"But someone should."
---
That night, when Celeste made a snide remark at dinner—"Poor Nuria looks so lost, doesn't she?"—Asa's fork clinked against his plate.
He didn't look up.
"You've always had a sharp tongue, Celeste," he murmured, "but I'm starting to wonder if you don't want it anymore."
The table froze.
"Excuse me?" she asked, half-laughing.
"I said," he raised his eyes to hers, "speak of me. Speak of the weather. But if you speak of her again, you won't be invited back."
Celeste's breath hitched.
Nuria stared at her plate, heart thudding. Something about Asa's voice—how protective, how cold—felt like a rope tightening around her, comforting and choking at once.
At the head of the table, Dorian cleared his throat.
"Enough tension for one evening," he said with a gentle smile. "Let's not forget why we're all gathered—to celebrate family."
His words diffused the atmosphere. But behind that smile, his eyes flicked to Asa with something deeper—something unreadable.
---
Later that evening, when Nuria stepped onto the balcony alone, Asa followed.
"I don't need defending," she said quietly.
"You do," he replied. "Just not always in front of you."
She turned to him.
"Why are you different?"
He didn't answer.
"I think something's changing," she said. "In you. Around us. But I still have doubts whether it's change, or I just don't know you like I think I do."
He reached out, touched the curve of her jaw.
"You keep smiling like the world hasn't broken you. That's dangerous in a place like this. They are going to try to make sure to break you themselves."
She stepped back. "Then let me break. It's not like I am not already breaking because of you."
His hand dropped. His jaw tightened.
And then, like wind through a crack in the stone, his voice softened as his eyes filled with tears.
"I am so sorry."