Chapter 298 More Than a Title

MARGAUX

“I’ve never seen reason to take much seriously, if I’m honest. I watched you and Bastien carry all of it, all the expectations, all the weight, and I told myself I was lucky to be the one nobody actually needed. I told myself that so many times I almost believed it.”

“But?”

“I wasn’t like either of you,” he said. “You wanted to be involved, even though you were the last child and a girl and everyone assumed you’d have no real say in anything. You fought for a seat at that table anyway, even when you knew it would never be given to you. Bastien, on the other hand, wanted it because it was simply expected of him, and he tried to be worthy of it in his own quiet way.” He paused. “I never wanted any of it. Or I told myself I didn’t.”

“And now?”

He looked at me then, something raw and unguarded flickering across his face before he could smooth it back into something calmer.

“Now I get a chance,” he said, “that I never actually thought I’d get. Being the spare meant it was almost impossible I’d ever really need to step up. I built an entire life around that impossibility. Around not needing to want it, because wanting something I’d never have felt fucking pointless.”

Something in that sentence undid me a little, the quiet admission buried underneath it, that he had wanted it after all, but had simply learned to bury the wanting so deep it looked like indifference from the outside.

“Rémy,” I said softly.

“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head, a faint, embarrassed laugh escaping him. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine. I promise you, I’m fine. It’s strange, that’s all. Strange to suddenly have permission to want something I spent years convincing myself I didn’t and could never have.”

“You’ll be good at it,” I said. “You’re kinder than either of us ever were. That matters more than Father ever gave it credit for.”

“We’ll see,” he said, though something in his posture had eased slightly, like the words had actually landed somewhere useful.

I let the silence stretch for a moment, both of us sitting with the strange, complicated relief of Bastien’s survival tangled up with everything else this night had already cost.

“Shanelle,” I said finally. “Do you know where they’re holding her?”

Rémy’s expression sobered instantly.

“The holding cells,” he said. “The lower level, I believe, and though I am not sure where in the lower level, I assume it would be deep in and near the old armory. Given what they fear she could be now, that would be the best place to keep her locked in. I haven’t seen her myself, but I know she will most likely be there.”

“I need to get her out,” I said. “And I need to get out of here myself, eventually. This war will not end. Father does not intend for it to end, and I was dumb to believe that there was a chance that it would because I came home, when Father would rather just lock me in my bedroom like I’m twelve again.”

“I’ll help you,” Rémy said, without hesitation. “When the moment comes. Whatever you need.”

“You’d risk that?” I asked. “Now that you’re about to be heir apparent?”

He looked at me like the question itself was slightly absurd.

“You’re my sister,” he said. “That matters more to me than a title I never asked for in the first place.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand, grateful in a way that didn’t have adequate words attached to it.

“What happens now,” I asked, “with Father? He’s grieving a son who isn’t actually dead. What does that even look like, once the truth eventually comes out?”

Rémy’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Bastien doesn’t want it to come out,” he said. “That’s what he told me explicitly on the call. He begged me not to tell Father anything. He said if Father knew he was alive, he’d drag him back here the second he found him, back into everything he just escaped from.”

“His personal hell,” I repeated, remembering the word Rémy had used earlier.

“His words,” Rémy confirmed. “He didn’t explain it fully, but I could hear it in his voice. Whatever he was living here, whatever this house and this title actually cost him, he’d rather stay dead to all of us than go back to it.”

“That’s so sad,” I said. “That he’d choose to let Father grieve him rather than face this life again.”

“Maybe,” Rémy said. “Or maybe it’s the first genuinely selfish thing he’s ever done for himself. I don’t think it’s my place to judge him for it, honestly. I don’t know what he actually went through here. Just like I wouldn’t fully get it with you. Whatever it was, it sure broke something loose in him that finally let him choose himself over what everyone else expected.”

I thought about that, about my own choice to break Étienne’s neck and drive myself straight into the middle of a war, and I wondered whether Bastien and I weren’t so different after all, both of us making impossible, unilateral decisions in the name of protecting what we cared about, even if it meant being hated for it afterward.

“I understand it,” I said quietly. “More than I probably should.”

Rémy studied me for a moment, something knowing in his expression.

“Étienne,” he said. “Is he alright? After everything?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, my voice cracking slightly. “I left him unconscious in our bed and drove myself here without telling him the full truth beforehand. He probably hates me right now, and he has every right to.”

“Or he understands exactly why you did it,” Rémy said, “because I have watched you fight and sacrifice for people you love your entire life, and this isn’t any different.”

“I hope so,” I whispered.

Rémy leaned his head back against the wall, exhaling slowly, and for a moment we simply sat there together, grief and relief and fear all tangled up in the same quiet room, two siblings who’d just learned the world was slightly less broken than they’d believed an hour ago, even as everything else around them continued to fall apart.

“We’ll get through this,” he said finally. “All of it. Somehow.”

I wanted desperately to believe him.