“Mutual affection you said?! Ha!” Julian’s laugh slammed against the rafters, brittle and furious. “My daughter is young and foolish—you fooled her with sweet words!” he barked.
“Why did you sneak into Jade Immortal Manor and cozy up to Rania? What are you after? And Quentin’s sudden disappearance, was that your doing as well? Speak!”
His thoughts spun. In his head, Quentin’s strange disappearance, the Turner brothers’ eerie deaths, and this sudden, enigmatic Jared fused into one story. A vast shadow of conspiracy and imminent danger closed over him.
“Father, Jared isn’t a villain! He’s been wonderful to me! He even shares his most precious treasures! He means every word he says to me!” Rania‘s nails bit through Jared’s sleeve as she clung to him, tears sliding down her face. She faced her father and shouted, “I chose this! If you want him dead, kill me first!”
Julian’s voice cracked with fury. “Y-You… Unfilial girl!”
Jared saw the older man’s shoulders tremble, rage and disbelief twisting that stern face because his daughter had just turned her blade on him. Words clung in Julian’s throat, too thick for speech. Beneath the storm, Jared caught a flicker—fear, maybe love—because Julian had only that one cherished daughter. The tension in the man’s clenched fists loosened by a hair.
Then the killing light returned, swirling in Julian’s eyes like dark fire, hot enough that Jared felt the air tighten against his skin. The manor lord’s gaze locked on Jared, cold and fixed, as though measuring where to strike first.
No doubt remained: the man meant to erase him. Yet Julian’s eyes flicked toward Rania, lingered, then snapped back. That heartbeat of wavering told Jared where the leverage lay.
Jared felt the killing pressure bearing down. A humorless breath brushed his throat, but outwardly he sighed. He lowered his voice for Rania. “Rania, don’t do this. He is still your father.”
Jared turned toward the manor lord and met the frigid stare. “Manor Lord, my feelings for Ms. Rania are genuine… Grand Chamberlain Fay invited me here to help him study the old texts. I have no idea why he left the manor… If you mistrust me, I will depart at once and never set foot in Jade Immortal Manor again. Just, please, do not blame her.”
Inside, Jared let the words fall like bait, hoping retreat would buy him room to maneuver. A direct clash now, he knew, would waste strength he still needed elsewhere. His true hunt lay with the celestials and the old vendetta, goals that demanded patience, not a brawl in the front yard. For now, Rania was both ally and armor; he had no reason to discard the cover she offered.
Julian barked a laugh, sharp as splitting wood. “Leave?! Dream on!”
“Speak your real name and purpose!” Julian warned, voice dropping to a lethal hush, “or you won’t leave this place alive.” His eyes dismissed every word Jared had offered, branding it a lie before it fully left his mouth.
“Father, touch him and I’ll die right here!” Rania cried. She tore the silver hairpin from her bun, the razor tip pressed into her pale throat, and a bright bead of blood blossomed. Tears blurred her gaze, but the resolve in it chilled Jared more than steel. “I mean it!” she said, voice breaking.
“Rania! Put the pin down!” Julian’s roar cracked across the courtyard. Horror chased the fury from his features; he finally saw the madness in his daughter’s eyes. Jared believed it too; love and panic can push a girl past reason.
Steel hung in the air, no one daring to breathe. Julian’s chest rose and fell in ragged bursts, murder and worry tearing at the same rib cage. His gaze bounced from Jared to the glinting blood on Rania’s throat; the towering fury sank, strangled by fear for her.
“Fine… Fine!” Julian grated, teeth clenched so hard the words barely slipped out. “Boy!” he hissed, “for her sake I spare you today!”
The manor lord’s tone dropped to ice. “From now on you stay here. One step outside without my leave, and you die! Guards will watch night and day. Harm her, or scheme in any way, and I will tear your soul apart forever!”
Even as he said it, Jared heard the bitter taste of concession behind the threat. The father would not gamble his only child’s life.
Jared bowed lightly. “Thank you, Manor Lord…” He let a relieved breath spill, calculated to be heard.
Rania lowered the pin, then collapsed against Jared’s chest, sobbing from fear and injustice alike. Julian watched them, emotions knotting his brow until even Jared couldn’t name them all.
Rage, doubt, vigilance, and something darker smoldered behind the man’s eyes. Jared could feel it: to Julian, he was a buried thorn, painful and impossible to ignore.
With a final huff, the manor lord whipped his sleeve and vanished, his presence fading like a storm rolling off the hill. Yet the chill of unseen eyes settled over Grace Pavilion, clamping down harder than any chain.
The air inside Grace Pavilion finally loosened once Julian disappeared, yet the echo of his killing intent still clung to the beams. Jared felt the pause like a held breath before thunder—relief, but only the fragile kind that warns a greater tempest is already turning on the horizon.
He slid one palm in slow circles across Rania’s trembling back, matching his breaths to hers until the quiver eased. Over the curve of her shoulder, his gaze tracked the corridor Julian had taken, the line of his sight hard and chill as a drawn blade.
House arrest—that was the phrase Julian had tossed like a rusted shackle. Jared tasted the iron of it on his tongue, weighing limits against opportunity. And the watchers outside, eyes without faces, meant constant scrutiny. Chains could be made of silence just as well as steel.
Still, a cage offered walls for others more than for him. Under Julian’s own order, he could linger beside Rania openly and sift through manor records, and no one would question why he remained.
Boots scraped stone beyond the lattice doors. Jared leaned an inch to the side; in the courtyard, a ring of inner court guards, each at least upper-immortal third grade, stood statue-still, their armor dulled to shadow. Even maids carried written tokens just to cross a threshold.
