Chapter 5 Smoke Behind the Mirror

The next morning began with the taste of steel.

Not from a weapon-but from words.

Gold was seated at the long dining table, a croissant untouched on her plate, a fresh pot of coffee steaming beside her. Across the room, sunlight spilled through the high glass windows, draping everything in a glow too soft for the house it warmed.

She didn't see Nicolas enter.

She felt him.

His presence was a shift in the air. An unsettling silence, like a forest holding its breath.

"I trust you slept well," he said, voice like fine gravel.

Gold didn't look up immediately. "Not really. I dreamt of my freedom. It's always disorienting to wake up without it."

Nicolas made no comment. Instead, he circled to the head of the table, poured himself coffee, black, and took the seat beside her.

Too close.

She could feel the heat of him. He didn't speak. Didn't demand. Just watched.

Gold finally turned to him, chin high. "Staring won't make me more obedient."

"I don't want obedient," he said. "I want unshakable."

"Why?" she asked. "So I can be paraded as your untouchable queen while you burn kingdoms behind me?"

He tilted his head slightly, studying her. "No. So that when my enemies try to destroy me, they'll realize too late-they've aimed at the wrong half of the empire."

His words settled deep in her bones.

It was the closest he'd come to calling her an equal.

Still, her eyes narrowed. "You sound like a man with a very long list of enemies."

"I sound like a man who tells the truth."

Gold leaned forward, her voice lower. "Tell me something then. The truth. Why now? Why suddenly throw me into your world like a match into oil?"

Nicolas sipped his coffee. Calm. Composed.

Then: "Because time is running out."

She blinked. "For what?"

He didn't answer.

But something in his eyes darkened-like there were ghosts behind them, pounding to get out.

Later that afternoon, Gold found herself ushered into a room unlike the others she'd seen.

No marble. No glass.

Instead, it was all dark wood and books, a roaring fireplace, and a wall filled with weapons old enough to be museum pieces.

A man waited inside.

Tall, elegant, with silver streaks in his beard and a scar down the side of his face. His presence was quieter than Nicolas's-but not less dangerous.

"This is Donovan Graves," Nicolas said behind her. "Family consigliere. And your first tutor."

Gold turned sharply. "Tutor?"

"Yes. If you're going to stand beside me, you need to understand what that means."

Donovan stepped forward, hand extended. "Gold. Or would you prefer Miss Duvall?"

"Gold is fine," she said, shaking his hand.

His grip was firm. Unforgiving.

"You're not just marrying a man," Donovan said. "You're stepping into a machine. A network of power that operates beneath every headline, every suit, every business deal. Nicolas owns more than property-he owns fear."

"I'm familiar with fear," Gold said coolly. "We're not strangers."

Donovan studied her for a long moment.

Then, surprisingly, he nodded. "Good."

The next hour blurred into lessons: international names and black-market allies, alliances built on silence, debts paid in blood.

It wasn't a fairytale.

It was war.

And Nicolas Devereux was a general who never flinched.

By the time she was released back into the hall, her head buzzed with names and warnings. She pressed her palm to her temple, trying to catch her breath.

Clara appeared beside her. "There's something you need to see."

Gold followed her without a word, weaving through the twisting corridors of the estate until they entered a smaller wing Gold hadn't seen before.

Here, the air felt different. Quieter.

More personal.

They stopped before a single, locked door.

"This belonged to his mother," Clara said softly. "He never lets anyone in."

"Then why am I-"

"Because he told me to show you."

Clara handed her the key and stepped away.

Gold stood frozen for a moment.

Then, slowly, she turned the lock and stepped inside.

The room was bathed in pale light. Old perfume still lingered in the air-sweet, powdery, and faint.

There was a dressing table with faded lipstick tubes, an armchair draped in velvet, and beside the bed, a photo frame turned down.

Gold moved to it on instinct.

She picked it up gently.

In the photo, a younger Nicolas-barely twenty-stood beside a beautiful woman with haunting eyes and a smile that didn't quite reach them.

His mother.

There was grief in the picture. Even in youth, Nicolas had looked like a boy who knew loss intimately.

Gold set the frame down with reverence.

This room wasn't just a shrine.

It was a wound he hadn't allowed to close.

And for reasons she couldn't explain, he had let her see it.

That evening, Nicolas didn't join her for dinner.

Instead, a note arrived on cream paper with sharp ink.

"Meet me by the cliffs. Midnight."

-N

She stood at the edge of the world as the clock struck twelve, the ocean roaring beneath her like an ancient beast.

He arrived as promised.

Dressed in black.

No smile. No mask.

Just him.

Raw and unreadable.

"I saw your mother's room," Gold said.

"I know."

"You trusted me."

"I gave you access. That's not the same."

"Then what was it?"

He stepped closer.

Wind tugged at his hair. His voice, when it came, was low and almost... human.

"She believed in light. In healing. I believed in survival. It destroyed us both."

Gold's heart stilled. "She died because of you?"

He didn't flinch. "Because of the war I refused to walk away from."

Gold didn't ask for more.

She just stood with him. Quiet. Steady.

And for the first time, he didn't look like the devil.

He looked like a man who buried his heart a long time ago-and forgot where.