Chapter 103: Before the Apple Ripens

Before dawn had the chance to break, the Belmonts and the Henleys were already inside a carriage bound for Sexton, determined to fix the trouble Caroline had brought upon herself.

But when they arrived, they were made to wait until eleven in the morning. Edmond Mortis, the man in charge of the office, had arrived late.

“Mr. Mortis will see you now,” the attendant finally said and Caroline shot to her feet at once.

Inside the office, Mr. Mortis’ gaze settled on Ezekiel standing among the humans and he raised one of his eyebrows. He remarked,

“It is Sunday, Mr. Henley. I would assume you had better use for a holiday like outing outside Sexton.”

Ezekiel bowed, the smile on his face tight. He apologised, “Forgive me for troubling you, Mr. Mortis. There has been a little problem—”

“Little problem?” Caroline burst out, her eyes swollen from crying the entire previous day. “These hexed earrings won’t come off. They need to be removed, mister. I wore them for fun. If I knew they would lock like this, I would never have touched them! Please…we need them taken off.”

The vampire behind the desk barely reacted. His gaze shifted away from her and returned to Ezekiel instead, while silence filled the room. Before Caroline could continue rambling, Ezekiel caught her wrist gently but firmly, urging her to be quiet. She looked up at him with tearful desperation.

“Mr. Henley,” Mr. Mortis called, placing his glasses carefully on the bridge of his nose, “can you explain how you failed to complete the task required of every first year Groundlings?”

“The assignments were given…” Ezekiel replied, exhaustion evident in his tone despite his effort to remain polite. “It appears Ruelle failed to wear them and I didn’t check the result. She often keeps her hair down, which covers her ears and we missed it. It was—”

“I hope you were not attempting to keep Ms. Belmont out of the contract. No one has ever failed the contract from being completed in Sexton’s history,” Mr. Mortis interrupted curtly, leaning back in his chair with a faint, disapproving look. “Especially considering she is related to your wife.”

Mr. Mortis’ words struck a nerve in Mrs. Belmont. Her eyes widened, suspicion flashing across her face as if this had been Ezekiel’s plan all along after all, as he had once spoken of marrying Ruelle. She glared at Ezekiel and demanded,

“Why didn’t you make her wear it?!”

Mr. Mortis didn’t find it surprising that the student’s very own mother wanted the contract to be fulfilled. When money was involved along with survival, relationship meant very little in this world.

“Were you trying to protect her?” Caroline asked, frowning deeply, confusion and hurt mixing on her face. “But it backfired… I— I’m the one trapped now.”

“Like I said,” Ezekiel snapped, his composure turning thin, “I never noticed her ears under all that thick blonde hair.”

Mortis’ gaze drifted to Mr. Belmont, who stood stiffly with his hands drawn close to his chest and the man looked nothing less than a chicken with its wings resting on the sides. His eyes returned to others and he said at last,

“The earrings can be removed.”

Relief flooded Caroline’s face. She stepped forward at once, tilting her head to expose her ear before saying,

“Oh, thank goodness! Then please remove them. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can go back to our lives.”

“Mrs. Henley,” Mr. Mortis said calmly.

Caroline straightened at once. “Yes?” she asked, a hopeful smile already forming.

“Sexton has its rules. We do not null the contracts simply because someone regrets their decision. You should have thought more carefully before trying them on.” His voice remained even, almost polite. “With those earrings on you now, you now belong to Sexton. They can be removed under one condition.”

Mr. Belmont’s brows drew together. He asked, “What condition?”

“Ordinarily, young unmarried women are valued far higher,” Mortis continued, lifting a hand as if discussing market goods. “However, Mrs. Henley is already married. Her value is reduced, though not void.”

Caroline’s smile faltered at the word value. She asked, “S–So… how much? Two hundred gold coins?”

At the back, Mr. Belmont flinched at the number.

Mortis shook his head once and finally said, “Five thousand gold coins.”

The Belmonts’ faces drained of colour. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the money on them, but that such a number might as well have belonged to another world.

Caroline staggered forward where she stood, horror spreading across her face as the weight of it settled in. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the desk to steady herself. She then suddenly turned to her husband in desperation.

“You have that much money, don’t you, honey?” She asked quickly, words tumbling over one another. “We don’t need to host any soirees for a while, and I don’t need new jewellery. We can manage that much, can’t we?”

Caroline’s voice rose at the end, fragile hope clinging to every word.

Ezekiel stared at the woman he had been tricked into marrying.

His hands twitched at his sides, and for a fleeting second he imagined closing them around her throat. Not from rage alone, but from the ruin she dragged behind her. He hadn’t attempted it because Mrs. Belmont would be the first one to point her finger at him.

Five thousand gold coins… If he liquidated enough assets, he could raise that sum. But he had no intention of sinking to the Belmonts’ level of being homeless. Not for this.

Instead, he forced his expression into something strained and regretful. He replied to Caroline, “I don’t believe I have that much, darling.”

Caroline turned to him fully, panic widening her eyes. She asked, “Then what are we going to do?”

“Until the sum is paid,” Mr. Mortis said smoothly as though discussing paperwork rather than a life. “Mrs. Henley will attend Sexton as any other Groundling. You may report tomorrow.”

“She is a married woman! Sexton takes only unmarried women in,” Mrs. Belmont argued while devastated. But Mr. Mortis didn’t seem to care.

“Also,” Mr. Mortis added, adjusting the glasses on his face, “it is essential that you attend your classes and do not fall behind. Failure will place you at the very bottom of the barrel. And I assure you, Mrs. Henley, that is not a position you would enjoy.”

He then looked back to Ezekiel and stated, “I trust Mr. Henley will explain the remaining details to you.”

The words hit Ezekiel harder than the number had.

He didn’t know how Sexton would handle it if Caroline were ever tied to June Clifford’s death. The possibility of execution was rare when there was profit to be made. Humans with value were far more useful breathing than buried.

He had hoped Mortis would dismiss it with a glare or a warning, a small fine maybe or anything else. But this? Not only would the Belmonts remain tangled in his life, Caroline would now be here as well.

He had carefully planned to get Caroline out of the picture by placing her necklace near the body. Not knowing she wasn’t just in the picture, but she was coming out of it to haunt him.

“You must be as shocked as I am, Eze,” Caroline said, clutching his arm with trembling fingers. She tried to smile, as though they were facing a minor inconvenience. “Maybe we’ll figure something out. And in the meantime… we can spend some wonderful time here together, can’t we?”

Caroline’s optimism felt like a curse laid gently on Ezekiel’s shoulder that he couldn’t shrug off.

Far away from Sexton, back in the Slaters’ mansion, Ruelle who had slipped back into sleep, opened her eyes again when Maude arrived at the room with a tray of afternoon meals.

Once she finished eating, she was given a warm towel bath, though faint aches lingered beneath the surface. The housekeeper brushed and tied her hair before leaving her side to continue the housework.

Bored in her room, Ruelle decided to step into the corridor with the hem of her dress sweeping softly across the carpeted floor. Her brown eyes looked around and she murmured,

“Where is everyone…?”

The place felt deserted with not a single servant in sight. As if they had been instructed to remain hidden and to never disturb the Slaters or guests under their roof.

When Ruelle came across a grand piano sitting at the centre of the instrument room, she couldn’t resist taking a seat in front of it. Music had always been the one place that never asked anything of her.

She stretched her fingers before beginning to play. The sound drifted and lingered against the walls, light enough that she almost forgot she was the one making it. She closed her eyes, letting the music carry her, sinking into it until her thoughts loosened.

When she opened her eyes, her fingers faltered and she ended up pressing the wrong keys.

Lord Azriel stood at the doorway and he wore a grim expression as if she had interrupted his peaceful afternoon.

She stood up with an apologetic expression and offered a quick bow. “I—” her words tripped in her mind. “I didn’t mean to disturb. I will stop,” she added, realising she hadn’t asked permission.

“Where did you learn that tune?” Lord Azriel asked, his voice deep and his gaze one that could make a person cower.

“I was taught when I was little,” she replied before silence fell.

She then heard Lord Azriel mention, “My wife used to play it often when she was still alive. It was something she created when she was carrying Lucian.”

Ruelle wondered if she had stirred pleasant memories or painful ones of his wife. From the portrait she had seen, the lady’s smile and presence was warm. It felt like a loss that never truly left.

She could only believe that her family had once brushed close enough to such circles, for melodies like this to be passed and learned. To fill the space, she uttered, “I don’t know much about it. Only that it sounds like something to look forward to.”

“The last seven seconds are off from its original piece,” Lord Azriel pointed out.

“My memory must have distorted it with time,” Ruelle offered a slight bow in apology.

Lord Azriel’s gaze didn’t lighten but only turned heavier with seconds that passed. She wondered if he was going to ask her to leave, but then he said,

“Dane is generous with his time. Though it is not always an advantage,” Lord Azriel’s words sounded casual, but the weight in them was impossible to ignore. “This place is not gentle to those who linger. And once attention is given here, it is rarely withdrawn. If you hope to leave from here unchanged, you must be careful who you involve yourself with.”

Without another word, he left the place, his footsteps echoing through the corridor outside.

Ruelle wasn’t sure if Lord Azriel’s words were meant to be advice or a warning. Truthfully, his words felt puzzling. Did he think she was trying to curry a favour from Dane?

After ten minutes, Ruelle visited the library that didn’t hold only books of laws, world or history but also stories that were old, their spines worn.

She pulled the ladder and climbed, one careful step at a time, her fingers brushing the leather-bound edges as she read the titles. Maybe she could ask to borrow one, she thought absently.

Then her gaze drew to a particular book— The Man in Her Cage.

Her fingers hesitated before pulling the book. She rested the book against the ladder rung and opened it.

At first, she read only a few lines. Then a page. Minutes passed without her noticing, as she had moved past several pages.

She read the lines carefully. But the further she read, the warmer her skin felt, as if the pages carried a heat. She had spent her life being useful and needed. This was the first time she had stumbled upon something that spoke of being wanted.

Her lips parted at a particular scene as the words she read felt intimate. She was finishing another page, when—

“If you intend to read something like that,” Lucian’s voice came from behind her, “you should sit. Losing your balance on a ladder would be unfortunate.”

Startled, Ruelle shut the book in her hands with a sharp thud. Shame rose too quickly, as though wanting anything for herself was wrong.

Of all the things to be caught doing in Lucian’s house—

She quickly moved to climb down, her foot searched blindly for the next rung but this only made the ladder move backwards under her weight.

But in a second it steadied and so did her body, as Lucian’s hand came to rest at the small of her back and his other hand caught the ladder’s rail and pushed it back in its place.

The warmth of his hand lingered through the thin fabric of her dress. It felt like she kept getting help from him without something being demanded from her in return.

“I—” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She swallowed, eyes briefly closing and murmured, “I was reading. I was bored—”

“Ready.”

“What?” Her gaze moved to his eyes, caught by the stillness of his expression, while her thoughts still muddled from the content of the book.

“To take the next step,” Lucian replied before adding, “Down the ladder.”

Once Ruelle found her footing on the ground, she realised her fingers still clenched around the book. Clearing her throat, she extended the book to him.

Lucian didn’t take the book, withdrawing his hand from her back instead. He remarked, “You are past the point of curiosity. Stopping now would only make it harder to forget.”

Something in his voice made Ruelle hesitate. He did not sound as though he were judging her, yet there was something in his tone she could not place. She saw him step closer to the rack and push a book back into place to align with the rest of them.

Ruelle wondered if he had read the book as well. She then asked softly, “Do her memories ever come back?”

Lucian looked back at her. His head tilting slightly, he questioned her back, “Not going to finish the book?”

She moved the book behind her back and murmured, “Not like that. I was only wondering.” After a moment, she said, “There’s a piece of music. Lord Azriel said the ending was wrong when I played it. Do you happen to know it?”

“Which one?” Lucian asked, studying her.

Ruelle hummed the melody, quiet and careful, as though not wanting to get it wrong again.

For the briefest second something shifted behind Lucian’s eyes. The change was so fleeting that she believed she had imagined it. He answered, as flecks of black touched his iris,

“Lullaby for the unseen. That’s what it’s called.” Ruelle nodded, as she didn’t know its name before. He asked her, “How do you know about it?”

Lord Azriel had asked her the same question, Ruelle thought with a small, uncertain smile at what he had said later. She then responded,

“It’s been with me since I was little. My family must have taught it… though I never got to learn many songs, as we didn’t own a piano after moving towns. But when I visited the church some evenings, I would play it there,” she rambled.

But she hadn’t been able to play the piano for some time now, as life had grown too complicated for such small freedoms.

Lucian stared at her while she looked at the books in the rack next to them, the flecks of black in his eyes disappearing and he said,

“Some things return. Even if only in fragments. The mind has a way of discarding what seems important and clinging to the smallest details instead.”

When his eyes moved to the book in her hand, Ruelle nodded, “So she does remember who she is.” She let him know, “I–I am reading for the story.”

“I didn’t ask,” Lucian responded coolly. Yet his eyes did not leave her as though her words mattered even though he denied it. Unable to keep up with his gaze, Ruelle looked away.

She needed air, Ruelle thought to herself as the place felt warm. She walked towards the window. Beyond the glass, the garden stretched in muted evening light. Near the stone wall stood a single apple tree, its branches full of small green apples.

“That one’s all by itself,” she murmured to herself. “Do you like apples, Lucian?” She turned to him and continued, “I mean—during the art class, I saw the apple you had painted.” The instructor had specifically told them he didn’t want to see any fruits or vegetables, which Ruelle had found to be odd then.

Lucian followed her gaze to the tree. He replied nonchalantly, “I didn’t initially. But they grow on you.”

“Like me?” Ruelle asked with a small smile, as he seemed less annoyed with her than when they first met.

“Be careful what you compare yourself to,” Lucian said his voice dropping just enough to make her chest feel tight. He gave her a look from the corner of his eye. “You shouldn’t assume things you aren’t prepared to understand.”

Ruelle blinked. “I… only meant—” But the rest of her words fell away. Did she jinx the moment?

Feeling out of place, she murmured, “I think I should go rest.” She offered a small bow and without waiting for an answer, she slipped out of the room, her footsteps light but hurried down the corridor.

Lucian remained where he stood. After a moment, his fingers ran through his black hair before coming to rest against the windowsill with his jaw tightening briefly. He exhaled,

“This is harder than it seems.”

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