HIS LOVER SHOWED UP AT THE WEDDING—THE DUKE WALKED PAST HER AND KNELT BEFORE HIS SILENT BRIDE

HIS LOVER SHOWED UP AT THE WEDDING—THE DUKE WALKED PAST HER AND KNELT BEFORE HIS SILENT BRIDE The color of my own invisibility was a pale, washed-out gray, the shade of forgotten things. It was the color of the dress my stepmother, Beatrice, had chosen for me, the color of the wall I was meant to blend into. "You are a creature of the shadows, Elara," she had said, her voice a silken thread laced with arsenic. "It is best you learn to embrace them. Stand by the pillar near the ferns. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not move. Become architecture." And so I had. For three hours, I had been a silent caryatid, supporting nothing, witnessing everything.My sister, Rosalind, was a sunburst in the center of the ballroom. Her gown was the color of fresh cream, shimmering with a thousand tiny seed pearls. Her laughter was a melody that drew people to her like moths to a flame, a flame my stepmother carefully tended. My father, a man long since hollowed out by grief and acquiescence, stood beside Beatrice, his smile a fragile, painted thing. He saw me, I knew he did. A flicker of something—pity, perhaps, or shame—crossed his face before he turned back to the glittering assembly, leaving me to my stony silence. I was the family's inconvenient truth, the quiet, plain daughter from his first marriage, a living relic of a love he had been forced to forget.