Chapter 94: Blown Cover

Elias did not underestimate Victoria Frost for a second.

A woman could be beautiful, polished, and young-looking without being remotely easy to handle, and Victoria was all three in a way that should have made anyone with sense more careful, not less. Nor did he do what Liora might have assumed he would, which was let his thoughts drift toward seduction the moment he saw a powerful woman with a face like that.

Based on Giselle’s age alone, even if Victoria had become a mother unusually early, she still had to be nearing forty. That put her at least a decade ahead of Serena Blackwood, and ten years did not mean age alone. It meant judgment. It meant experience. It meant ten more years spent learning how to read people, use silence, and make others move first.

Serena was already difficult enough.

It only looked easy from the outside because Elias had navigated her well. In truth, she was exhausting. Her moods shifted like weather, and the instability under her polish never stopped being dangerous. If Serena was that hard to deal with, then Victoria would be worse.

So Elias stood in the doorway and said nothing.

She would speak first. He was sure of that.

"Come in."

Exactly as expected.

Only then did Elias step farther into the room, letting a hint of hesitation show in the way he moved, as if he were a little unsure of his place here and aware that he was somewhere far above his proper station.

Victoria watched him with a soft smile. "Close the door."

He obeyed immediately, turning around and shutting it behind him with the neat compliance of someone led by the slightest touch.

That was the normal reaction to her.

Anyone placed in front of a woman like Victoria should have been easy to direct. She had the presence for it, and worse, the habit. People like her stopped asking for compliance long before they realized they had.

"At this hour, you probably haven’t had breakfast yet," she said in that same warm, unhurried tone. "Would you like some?"

The sentence was shaped like a question.

The voice underneath it was not.

She did not sound as though she believed he would refuse. More accurately, she did not sound as though she had left room for refusal in the first place.

Elias lowered his gaze for a breath, as if collecting himself, then looked up and finally spoke. His voice came out soft and faint.

"I... I’m fine. I have class soon."

He paused again, then added with careful politeness, "If you brought me here to talk about something, you can just say it."

A quiet preemptive move.

He wanted it established early that he intended to leave.

"Is that so?"

Victoria looked at him.

Her expression did not actually change, yet something about the set of her mouth made Elias feel as though the smile had deepened by the smallest degree, not enough to become obvious, only enough to make it seem as if she were amused and unimpressed at once.

Her eyes rested on him without hurry.

Giselle’s gaze was cold, but transparent. It was like looking into clear water and seeing all the way to the bottom.

Victoria’s was nothing like that.

Her eyes were ink.

Anything dropped into them vanished.

Elias, sensing the shift clearly enough, stopped talking.

The best response to an unknown opponent was often stillness.

Victoria did not seem bothered by his silence. She only took it as agreement. She lifted one hand and clapped lightly.

Servants entered at once.

There were many of them, but they moved in flawless order, quiet and efficient enough to feel almost theatrical. In less than a minute they had arranged an enormous redwood table between them and laid out breakfast.

The sight would have been funny if it had not been so deliberate.

The table was absurdly large, built for gatherings and status display, yet on its surface sat only a few steamed buns and two glasses of fresh milk.

Elias saw the point immediately.

The food did not matter.

The size of the table did.

Victoria wanted distance. She wanted him to feel it in a physical, measurable way. She was separating them by furniture, by scale, by atmosphere, and through all of it she was reminding him where each of them stood.

Pressure, gently applied.

She smiled throughout, and there were moments when the expression reminded him of Serena, but only for a moment. Serena could be difficult, but sooner or later her emotions leaked through the seams. Victoria was harder to parse. Even Elias could not fully read her yet.

He was not rattled.

That, too, was normal.

A complete world would always contain people troublesome enough to challenge even someone who had seen stranger things than this.

"Sit," Victoria said, lowering herself into her chair with graceful ease. The fitted silk of her dress pulled into faint, elegant folds. "It really is unfair, making you eat something this plain with an old woman like me."

Elias glanced at her very briefly.

She had him brought here without notice, and now she was talking about unfairness.

Interesting.

He answered with a timid smile. "It’s okay. I’m not picky."

Then he picked up one of the buns, opened his lips, and took a bite.

His eyes lit up at once.

The dough was thin and soft, delicate without being flimsy, and the filling inside was rich without turning greasy. The pork was seasoned beautifully, and there was something else in it too, some finely chopped vegetable lending a clean sweetness and a faint fresh scent that kept the whole thing from becoming heavy.

The milk was excellent as well. It tasted newly made, smooth and warm, and even without sugar it carried a natural sweetness on the tongue.

It was an annoyingly perfect breakfast.

Elias was pleased enough that he briefly thought the trip had not been a complete waste after all.

If Victoria meant to leverage this and calmly request that he stay away from Giselle for a while, he might even agree. Temporarily, anyway. He had already intended to leave Giselle for later. Putting more distance between them for the time being would not hurt his plans.

Victoria finished before he did, though Elias had not even noticed when it happened. Her pace had been hidden inside perfect composure.

When he finally set the last bun down, she asked, "Are you full?"

Elias nodded. "Yes."

The answer brought another wave of servants into the room. The table disappeared. The breakfast disappeared. In less than a minute the space between them had been erased, as if it had only ever existed because Victoria wanted it to.

Then she stood.

Bare feet in embroidered slippers crossed the floor toward him with unhurried elegance. When she reached him, she offered a folded napkin in one hand.

"Wipe your mouth."

Nothing about her behavior could be faulted. She looked and sounded exactly like a refined elder showing quiet consideration to a younger guest. There was not a trace of impropriety in it.

Elias accepted the napkin and dabbed at his mouth.

He also understood exactly what she had done.

The table had kept them distant, so the relationship had felt distant. Now the table was gone, she had stepped close, and the atmosphere naturally felt more intimate. None of it had happened by chance. Every shift in space had been created by her on purpose.

Everything in this room was hers to shape.

For the first time, Elias understood a little more clearly why Giselle had run from home.

A mother whose smallest gesture carried calculation was not easy to live under.

Then Victoria said, "Bring it in."

A servant entered carrying a bag. At her nod, one of the male attendants stepped forward and placed it in Elias’s hands.

"Open it."

Her tone did not change, but the weight of the bag made something tighten low in Elias’s chest. It felt familiar in a way he disliked.

He opened it and looked inside.

Giselle’s coat.

The one he had quietly sold off.

In that instant, every trace of softness vanished from his face.

The timid uncertainty drained away so completely it was as though it had never existed. What remained was calm, level, and clear-eyed.

So. He was exposed.

The coat alone did not prove everything, but Victoria having it meant she had more. Enough more. Enough to know he had been playing a role, enough to know he had deliberately entangled himself with Giselle.

Continuing the act after that would only make him look foolish.

Another servant stepped forward with a second bag.

This time Elias hesitated before taking it. He opened it more slowly.

Inside was a servant uniform.

And a pair of cat ears.

That answered another question.

Victoria did not only know about Giselle. Whatever he had been doing with Serena and Liora, she knew enough about that too, or enough to reconstruct it. There was no salvaging the cover now. If this counted as a crash, then he had gone through the windshield.

[Host...]

Shh.

Elias was thinking.

Specifically, he was trying to determine why Victoria Frost had wanted him here in person. If she already knew what he had been doing, was this meant to be punishment? A warning? A demonstration of power?

He was still weighing the possibilities when a soft hand rose toward his face and, with effortless familiarity, removed his glasses.

"Lift your head," Victoria said. "Let me have a proper look at you."