Chapter 206

Elara’s POV

The house looked the same.

That was the cruelest part.

Same iron gate. Same climbing ivy on the eastern wall. Same stone steps leading to the front door, worn smooth in the center from years of footsteps.

I stood on the path and couldn’t move.

Kaelen was already at the door, key in hand. He glanced back. Waited. Said nothing.

My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The short walk from the carriage to the entrance had taken everything I had. Now the final stretch—a few steps, maybe fewer—seemed impossible. Like crossing a frozen lake and knowing the ice was already cracked beneath my feet.

I made myself move.

One step. Two. The smell hit me first. Through the open door, a rush of warm air carrying scents I hadn’t known I remembered. Beeswax candles. Pine wood. Something faintly sweet, like dried lavender tucked into linen closets.

Home.

No. Not home. Not anymore. A place I had abandoned.

I stepped inside.

The foyer was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I had grown larger in the wrong ways—harder, sharper, all edges where softness used to be. My eyes swept the space and snagged immediately on the details that hadn’t existed before.

A pink backpack slumped against the bottom stair. Tiny shoes scattered beside it—some covered in glitter, others printed with little dragons.

Lyra’s things.

I knew it the way I knew my own pulse. These belonged to the daughter I’d left when she was still small enough to cradle in one arm.

My throat closed.

“Come in,” Kaelen said. Not gently. Not harshly. Just flat. The voice of a man who had rehearsed neutrality until it became reflex.

I followed him into the living room.

Coloring books and puzzles covered the coffee table.

And on the wall—the portraits.

I stopped breathing.

They were arranged in a row above the mantelpiece. The new portraits showcased Valerius’s growth through his childhood, tracing the progression from a little boy into an older youth. Each portrait captured a phase I had missed. Each one a door I could never reopen.

Beside them were smaller frames of Lyra, capturing her early birthdays. From a round-cheeked baby to a steadier toddler, and then a grinning little girl. They marked the time that had passed since I left when she was merely an infant.

Every milestone. Every candle. All of it had happened without me.

My knees buckled.

I caught myself on the back of a chair. Gripped it hard enough that my knuckles turned white. The room blurred. I blinked rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall. Not here. Not yet.

Kaelen stood near the fireplace. He was watching the portraits too, but his expression was blank. Scraped clean.

“I kept everything,” he confessed, staring at the mantelpiece.

I looked at him.

“Your clothes. Your books.” A pause. “That stupid mug you refused to throw away.”

“Throwing them away felt like—” He stopped. His jaw flexed. “Like giving up.”

The silence pressed in.

“Valerius,” he said, and his voice changed. Went hollow. Empty. Like he was reading from a report about someone else’s family. “Initially, he cried himself to sleep. He’d take your wool cardigan from the closet. He’d hold it against his face and just—”

He broke off.

I couldn’t breathe.

“He did that until he grew older,” Kaelen continued in that same flat, gutted tone. “Then I forced him to stop. Corrected the habit. Told him he needed to be strong.” A muscle ticked in his cheek. “He put the cardigan back in the closet. Never touched it again. Never mentioned you again either.”

The words landed like blows. Precise. Devastating. Each one aimed at the exact center of the wound I’d been carrying for years.

I deserved them. I knew that. But knowing didn’t make them hurt less.

“And Lyra?” My voice came out as a whisper.

Something shifted in his face. Subtle. A fracture in the mask.

“To Lyra, you’re just a made-up princess,” he revealed cruelly.

I pressed my hand against my mouth. The air in the room was too thick. Too full of ghosts. I could see them everywhere—the phantom shapes of my children growing up in this house without me. Learning to walk, to read, to tie their shoes. All the ordinary, irreplaceable moments that had slipped through my fingers like sand.

And I had chosen to leave.

The guilt was enormous. It filled the room. It pressed against the walls and ceiling and threatened to crush me flat.

The tension reached its absolute peak when the nanny dropped the children off.

A sound at the front door.

Quick footsteps—light ones, uneven, the unmistakable rhythm of a small child running on floors too smooth for tiny shoes.

My heart stopped.

“Daddy! Daddy, Daddy, DADDY!”

The voice was high and clear and loud enough to rattle the windows. Before I could prepare—before I could arrange my face or steady my hands or remember how to be a mother—she was there.

She burst into the living room like a small comet. She wore her hair in ebony braids, her pink backpack bouncing on her shoulders. One of her little shoes was untied, the lace trailing behind her like a tiny white tail. She was energetic, loud, and observant—utterly, impossibly alive.

Lyra.

My daughter.

She didn’t seem confused at all. Instead, she pointed enthusiastically at me, repeatedly calling Kaelen “Daddy.”

Her eyes went wide as she caught sight of me.

“Daddy! Daddy!” She yanked Kaelen’s hand so hard he stumbled forward a step. She was bouncing on her untied shoe.

Lyra grabbed Kaelen’s hand, shaking it excitedly. She pointed at me, her voice ringing out loudly.

“Daddy, she’s the mommy from the bakery with the ’forest eyes’! The one I told you about before!”