Grace
The morning light is sharp and unforgiving, slicing through the tall windows of the breakfast room. The air smells of coffee, croissants, and unspoken rage. My father, Robert Teller, sits at the head of the table, his jaw a tight knot of fury. My mother, Eleanor, is beside him, her face a mask of pinched disappointment. A porcelain teacup trembles in her hand.
Isobel sits opposite me, the picture of gentle concern. She’s already dressed in a soft cream-colored dress, looking every bit the dutiful daughter. I, on the other hand, am still in my crimson gown from last night. I didn’t sleep. I planned.
“Do you have any idea what you have done?” My father’s voice is low, a controlled rumble that promises a storm.
I calmly take a sip of water. “I rejected a marriage proposal. I believe it’s still my right to do so.”
“Your right?” he scoffs, slamming his hand on the mahogany table. The silverware jumps. “You humiliated Theo Durant. You humiliated this family. The alliance with Durant Industries is the cornerstone of our five-year plan.”
“Perhaps we need a new plan,” I say, meeting his gaze without flinching. This is new. I’ve never been able to hold his stare for more than a few seconds.
My mother sets her cup down with a clatter. “Grace, this isn’t a game. Theo’s mother called me at dawn. Dawn! She was apoplectic. She thinks you’ve gone mad.”
“She’s just worried,” Isobel murmurs, reaching a hand across the table as if to comfort me. I don’t move. “Grace, darling, you’ve been under so much pressure. Perhaps you weren’t thinking clearly. If you just call Theo, explain…”
“My thinking has never been clearer,” I interrupt, my voice cutting through her syrupy tone. I turn my eyes on her. “And I would appreciate it if you stopped speaking for me.”
Isobel recoils, her blue eyes widening in feigned hurt. It’s a masterful performance. One I fell for every single time.
“That’s enough,” my father barks. “This insanity ends now. You will go to your room, you will get dressed, and then you will call Theo. You will beg for his forgiveness and accept his proposal. We will smooth this over. We will say you were overwhelmed by the occasion.”
“No.” The word is simple. Final. It hangs in the air between us.
His face darkens to a dangerous shade of plum. “I am not asking you, Grace.”
“And I am not a child you can command, Father.” I stand up, my chair scraping softly against the polished floor. “As for the family business, you seem to have forgotten something.”
“And what is that?” he asks, his voice dripping with condescension.
“My mother’s shares. They passed to me on my eighteenth birthday. It makes me the majority heir. While you may be CEO, I hold a significant portion of this company’s future in my hands. So my role in the business is not up for discussion. It’s a fact.”
My mother gasps. She looks at my father, who seems momentarily stunned into silence. He never imagined I’d have the spine or the knowledge to wield that power.
I press my advantage. I walk around the table until I’m standing beside him, looking down. “You’re so certain Theo is the right choice. A brilliant businessman. The key to our future.”
“He is ten times the strategist you will ever be,” he growls, recovering his footing.
“Is he?” I lean in, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Then ask him. Ask him about his secret plan to pour millions of Durant capital into OmniCorp’s new deep-sea shipping venture. He’s been courting their CEO for months. He thinks it’s the next big thing.”
My father’s eyes narrow. He knows OmniCorp. He knows the rumors. “That’s a bold move. Risky.”
“He’ll tell you it’s a sure thing,” I continue, the memory of Theo boasting about it just before he killed me flashing in my mind. “He’ll say he has inside information. Indulge him. Agree it’s a brilliant idea. And then, in six months, watch as that ‘sure thing’ sinks to the bottom of the ocean and takes half the Durant fortune with it.”
I pull back. The seed is planted. I can see the gears turning behind his eyes. How could I possibly know that? The business acumen I’m displaying is so far beyond the dreamy artist he raised.
“You’re bluffing,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction.
“Am I?” I straighten up and look at all of them. My furious father, my horrified mother, my venomous sister. “I’ll be in the office at nine a.m. Monday to discuss my new role. I expect a desk to be ready.”
Without another word, I turn and walk out of the room, leaving a crater of shocked silence in my wake.
The gardens are my only sanctuary. They always have been. The damp soil, the sharp scent of clipped boxwood, the heavy perfume of roses just coming into bloom. This is where I learned about the world. Not from books or tutors, but from the language of petals and roots.
I wander down a familiar gravel path, trailing my fingers over the thorns of a rose bush. Every scent has a purpose. Jasmine for calm. Rosemary for memory. Belladonna for… other things.
My mind is a whirlwind. Planting doubt in my father was the first step. But it’s not enough. He’s a traditionalist. He won’t cede control easily. I need independence. I need a lab. The main Teller Aromas labs are under his thumb, and Isobel, with her supposed ‘natural talent’, has free rein there. She’d sabotage any work I tried to do.
I stop by the old stone bench under the weeping willow, the same place I finalized the base notes for Aethelgard’s Bloom in my other life. The memory is so clear it’s painful. I had it. The perfect balance of rare orchid, smoked oud, and something else, a secret ingredient I’d synthesized myself. A scent that changed with the wearer’s skin chemistry, becoming uniquely their own. It was revolutionary. It was my soul in a bottle.
And they stole it.
“Hiding from the fallout?”
The voice is deep, unfamiliar yet ringing with a distant echo of memory. I spin around.
He’s leaning against the trunk of an ancient oak tree as if he’s been waiting. He’s tall, dressed in a perfectly tailored gray suit that looks out of place and yet completely natural in the wild elegance of the garden. His hair is the color of dark molasses, and his eyes… his eyes are the color of wet slate. Of steel.
Recognition dawns on me. It’s been years. Five, at least.
“Edmund Sterling,” I breathe.
He gives a slight, almost imperceptible smile. “So you do remember me. I was beginning to wonder.” He pushes off the tree and takes a few steps toward me. He moves with a quiet confidence that borders on predatory. This is not the lanky, serious boy who used to read history books while I sketched flowers.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my guard instantly up.
“My family’s estate borders yours, remember?” he says, his gaze sweeping over the gardens. “I heard the shouting from the breakfast terrace. Figured I might find the source of the commotion out here.”
“Snooping, you mean.”
“Observing,” he corrects, his eyes landing back on me. They are unsettlingly direct. “I was at your party last night. Kept to the back. It was quite the show.”
I cross my arms. “Everyone seems to think so.”
“My father had some choice words for yours this morning,” Edmund continues, his tone conversational. “He thinks you’ve destabilized the Durant-Teller alliance. Makes the market nervous.”
I lift my chin. “And what do you think, Edmund?”
He stops a few feet away from me. The air between us crackles with a strange energy. “I think it was the most interesting thing to happen in this city in a decade.”
His answer surprises me into silence. There’s no judgment in his voice. No condescension. Only a cool, analytical intrigue.
“You’ve changed, Grace,” he says, his eyes searching my face. “What happened to the girl who used to hide behind her sketchbooks?”
“She grew up,” I say simply.
“It’s more than that.” He takes another step closer. I can smell the faint, clean scent of his cologne. Bergamot and cedar. It’s expensive. “Your eyes are different. They used to be like watercolors. Soft, easy to blur.”
I hold my breath.
“Now,” he says, his voice dropping slightly, “they’re like chips of flint. You could strike a fire with them.”
He sees it. He sees the change. Not as madness or a tantrum, but as a transformation. For the first time since I woke up in this life, I feel seen. It’s a terrifying and exhilarating feeling.
“People change,” I manage to say, my voice steadier than I feel.
“Not like this,” he counters softly. “This isn’t change. It’s a metamorphosis. And it makes people like your father, and mine, very uncomfortable. They like their butterflies pinned to a board.”
He understands the prison they had me in better than I did myself. A bitter laugh escapes me. “And what about you? Do I make you uncomfortable?”
Edmund’s expression is unreadable, but a flicker of something I can’t name crosses his features. It’s not discomfort. It’s something sharper. More intense.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” he says. “I’m intrigued.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment before glancing back toward his family’s estate. “I have a meeting. My flight from Geneva landed less than twelve hours ago and my father already has me on a leash.”
He turns to leave, then pauses.
“A word of advice, Grace,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “When you declare war, you need allies. Not ones who want to put you back in your cage, but ones who are willing to watch you burn it down.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply. He simply walks away, disappearing through a hedge that marks the property line, leaving me with the scent of bergamot, cedar, and a dangerous new possibility.
