Madeline
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the mock-up of the crest.
Black ink threaded through with silver glyph lines. Full Crow wingspan, spread wide. The blank banner waiting, right across my shoulders, whereVincent Crowwould go.
It was huge.
I’d never wanted a tattoo. I’d said it out loud, more than once. At dinners. In bed with him. In stupid conversations where nothing really mattered because I’d believed I would always have a choice.
Turns out wanting meant nothing now.
Tonight, ink would start there. When I tried to picture it actuallyonme, my stomach clenched hard enough I had to sit down on the edge of the bed, breathing through the nausea.
A crest.
On my back.
Permanent.
Every time I showered.
When I reached for a dress with a low back and remembered why I couldn’t pretend I was anyone else anymore.
Once that crest belonged to my skin, I stopped being a Thorne daughter with options and became a Crow bride-in-waiting.
There’d be no pretending this was a misunderstanding that could still be undone.
My fingers wouldn’t stay still. They fussed with the collar of my coat, smoothed down fabric that didn’t need smoothing. Anything to avoid looking at my reflection again.
Eventually there was nothing left to fix. I had to leave. The hallway outside my bedroom felt wrong.
Each step down the stairs felt like walking toward an execution I’d accidentally scheduled for myself.
My hands shook on the banister. I told myself it was just fear of needles. Pain. The idea of lying on a table for hours while someone dragged a machine over my spine.
But that wasn’t it. Not really.
The shaking came from somewhere deeper. The part of me that understood this was the last time I walked down these stairs asMadeline Thornethe way I’d always known her. After tonight, there would be a Crow crest inked into my back and the world would adjust accordingly.
By the time I reached the bottom step, my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
My father was in his office off the hall.Ouroffice. The space with the dual desk where we’d sat side by side when I was seventeen and he’d first let me shadow his calls. Where he’d passed me contracts and said,“Read this. Tell me what they’re trying to hide.”Where he’d told people on the other end of the line,“You’ll be speaking with my daughter; she’s sharper than I am.”
The door was half-open.
He usually sat straight-backed with a cup of tea close by and three open files in front of him, annotated in his cramped, precise handwriting.
Today he was slumped in his chair, tie loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. No datapad. No contracts. Just a half-empty bottle of liquor clutched in his hand.
The sight hurt in a way the tattoo never could.
He’d been drinking since the Sovereign chamber, a lot.
For a second—one fractured second when he lifted his head and our eyes met—it looked like he might hug me the way he had when I was twelve and thought I’d ruined everything with a single miscalculated comment at a gala. Might tell me I didn’t have to do this. That we’d find some loophole he hadn’t considered yet. That I wasn’t walking into this alone.
“Dad?” My voice came out soft, thin around the edges.
His fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle. The knuckles went white.
