Chapter 4

The mementos, the bitter notes.

They brought back the memory of Lily, our younger sibling.

Her death was a shadow that hung over us, a wound that never healed.

Chloe blamed my Sentinel duties, my supposed absence.

She never knew the truth I carried, the unspoken knowledge of her own carelessness, her negligence that day.

A truth I kept silent to protect her, even from herself.

That protection had cost me everything.

Among the items in the box, I found a folded document.

A "Pact Dissolution" request.

Chloe had drafted it three years ago.

Right after the Elders forced the Binding Alliance between me and Olivia.

She had seen the alliance as my ultimate abandonment, not the desperate measure it was to shield her from the consequences of her own major scandal.

She never submitted the form.

Perhaps some part of her still clung to the pact, to me, even in her resentment.

Or perhaps she simply wanted to hold it over me.

My hand trembled as I picked it up.

Her signature was already there, dated three years prior.

I found a pen.

With a sense of finality, I signed my name below hers.

Ethan, of the Sentinel Line.

It was done, at least on paper.

Chloe found me with the signed document.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed with fury.

"What have you done?" she hissed.

"I finished what you started," I said, holding up the paper.

She snatched it from my hand.

"This means nothing without the Elders' approval!"

"Perhaps," I replied, feeling a strange sense of calm. "But it means something to me."

She saw Olivia' s name on a piece of correspondence on my desk, a simple note confirming travel arrangements.

"You' re planning to leave with her, aren' t you?" Chloe accused, her voice rising.

"You' re going to abandon me, abandon Julian, just when we' re about to be married!"

"I am not abandoning anyone, Chloe," I said. "I am choosing to live."

Her face contorted. "You will be at my wedding, Ethan. You owe me that. You owe Julian that."

She was still trying to control me, even now.

The day of the wedding arrived.

I stood in the back of the grand hall of the Sentinel estate, a ghost at the feast.

Olivia was nearby, her presence a quiet reassurance. We had a plan.

Chloe was radiant, but her eyes kept darting towards me, a strange mix of triumph and anxiety.

Julian, preening in his wedding attire, approached me during a lull.

"Enjoying the show, Ethan?" he smirked, the Warding Charm I made gleaming on his chest.

He leaned closer.

"You know, Chloe told me about your parents."

My blood ran cold.

"Such a tragedy," Julian continued, his voice laced with mock sympathy.

"Their social ruin, their isolation... their deaths."

He paused, letting the words hang in the air.

"She was so worried, you see. Worried they knew too much, worried they' d interfere with her... with us."

"She subtly orchestrated it all, you know. Pulled the strings. Made sure they were out of the picture."

My mind reeled. Chloe? Responsible for my parents' demise?

The depth of her cruelty, her manipulation, it was beyond anything I could have imagined.