Chapter 159: The secrets of the Garden
Tatiana had not moved or spoken. She sat very still, with the particular stillness of someone whose mind is working considerably faster than their face suggests. She had been watching Cixi since she walked into the room. She had been looking for something, some obvious quality in Cixi that could explain her, that made it make sense.
Two Crown men. One dead, one sitting at a dinner table announcing intentions over a woman carrying someone else’s child. Tatiana had tried to find it, the thing that made Cixi extraordinary, and all she could see was the prosthetic belly and a woman who spoke too freely and ran her mouth like a blade.
It made her angrier than she had expected. Not at Cixi. At Rafael, who had been looking at Cixi with fascination while she sat right beside him.
Without delaying further, she turned to him.
"I need to speak with you." Her voice was quiet. "Outside. Now!"
Rafael exhaled slowly, pushed back his chair, and stood. "Fine."
They left together without addressing anyone, without apology or explanation, walking out of the dining room, leaving the problem entirely behind . Every remaining eye followed them out.
The door opened and closed.
Cixi looked around the table. At Lorian, who was studying the stem of his wineglass with elaborate disinterest. At Olga beside her, who was watching everything with that same composed, unreadable attention she had held all evening. At Tamara, still standing, still vibrating with controlled fury.
"I am going to my room," Cixi said.
"The place you are going," Tamara began, "is—"
"Tamara." Michael’s voice arrived like a door closing. "Let her go." He looked at his wife with patience. "She is a primary stakeholder in Crown Capital. I would strongly suggest that you govern yourself accordingly. We do not lose our composure over trivial matters."
"Manageable—" Tamara stopped when Michael held her gaze, and she read something in it that silenced whatever she had been about to say. Her mouth closed. And she turned and walked out of the dining room without another word.
Cixi looked once more at Lorian and Olga. Lorian did not look back at her. However, Olga did.
For a single moment their eyes held, but Olga’s face gave nothing away.
Then Cixi turned and walked out of the dining room.
She made it to the corridor, and then to the lift, and somewhere in the space between those two points the evening caught up with her.
The tears came quietly, the way they do when they have been held back long enough that they no longer ask permission. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and kept walking, because stopping felt worse than moving.
"You cruel man," she whispered to no one. To Cassian, wherever he was while she stood in his palace absorbing everything that belonged to him. "You left me here alone to fight your vultures while you sit somewhere in peace."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Yet the tears kept coming.
It wasn’t the threats that broke her open. Not Tamara’s fury, or Ursa’s cold arithmetic, or the weight of fifteen pairs of eyes deciding what she was worth. It was Lorian’s voice. The way he looked down upon her and the way he spoke abt her character. That she had no foundation. That her parents had given her no values. He had said it the way people say things they believe are simply true.
She knew who she was. She had built herself from nothing, and she knew exactly what that had cost.
But knowing something and being unmoved by it were two different things entirely.
She wiped her face again and pressed the lift button, and stared at the doors as they opened.
You will meet them, Cassian had told her. They are alive.
She held onto that as the doors closed around her.
*
In the garden, the night air was cool and indifferent.
Tatiana stopped at the edge of the stone path and turned to face Rafael directly. She had never been interested in approaching difficult things indirectly. It was one of the qualities her mother called impatience and she called efficiency.
"Do you want her?"
Rafael raised an eyebrow. "Good evening to you too."
"Answer me."
He looked at her for a moment. "I like her," he said. Then, as Tatiana turned on her heel to leave, "Not the way you are thinking."
She stopped. Turned back slowly, giving Rafael a questioning look that said, explain.
Rafael slid his hands into his pockets. The trace of amusement played at the corner of his mouth. "I wanted to see how everyone would react. I said what I said to watch the room." He shrugged. "Consider it an experiment."
Tatiana stared at him.
"For your entertainment... you mean?" she said slowly, as though making sure she had understood correctly. "You announced that you intended to marry a pregnant woman at a family dinner. In front of your parents. In front of my father. Infront of your soon-to-be fiancée ..." Her voice was very even. "And it did not occur to you that those words nearly hurt me?"
"I got my answer!"
"What answer were you looking for that had to make my family feel embarrassed?"
"You didn’t even like her," Rafael said, watching her. "You spent half that dinner deciding whether she was prettier than you."
Tatiana’s eyes flashed. "Whether I like someone has nothing to do with whether they deserve to be protected from harm. Those are entirely separate questions." She looked at him with something that was not quite anger and not quite disappointment, but held elements of both. "I thought you were better than that."
Rafael said nothing immediately. He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a cigarette, turned it once between his fingers before lighting it. The way he held it, the particular angle of his wrist, the unhurried first exhale; it was so precisely Cassian that it stopped Tatiana for a moment.
Rafael looked out across the dark garden and said nothing at all.
The smoke curled up into the night and disappeared.
"Why do I feel you are too naive?" Rafael said, without glancing at her.
Tatiana scoffed. "Naive? Atleast I didn’t ruin the dinner unlike you."
"The dinner was already ruined the moment she walked in." The corner of his mouth lifted, thinking of Cixi standing her ground against a table full of people who had already decided who she was. There was something almost amusing about it. Almost admirable.
"If she bothers everyone so much, why not simply remove her?" Tatiana said. "Buy her a flat somewhere. Crown can certainly afford it."
"Because Father chose to keep her." Rafael finally turned to look at Tatiana. "He knows exactly what her presence will cost this family every single day. Yet, he made that choice anyway."
"And that doesn’t bother you."
"It entertains me." He said it without apology, without lowering his voice. "Father has been sitting at the head of that table running the same meeting for twenty years. Same faces. Same arguments. Same silences." He tilted his head. "She walked in and turned the whole room inside out in one evening. Honestly? It was the most interesting dinner we have had in years."
Tatiana stared at him. "You are genuinely happy about this."
"I told you. I love chaos." Rafael turned to face her properly now, and his expression was the most honest it had been all evening, which somehow made it harder to read rather than easier. "Let me be clear with you, Tatiana. This is who I am. I don’t like boundaries. I don’t like chains, not on my neck, not on my ankles." He held her gaze. "I will give you everything you want from this marriage. Everything your father negotiated and more. But do not place yourself between me and my freedom. And do not place yourself between me and my goals."
Tatiana’s tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek.
"Your goal," she said slowly, "is Cixi... Your half brother’s fiancée."
