Chapter 459: The Truth Comes to Light

I kept turning over something Jeffrey had once told me Everly had a dimple on her left cheek, same as Lewis’s mother. Yael had one too, but on the opposite side, just like Dominic’s. Amber had none at all. The twins had always been told apart by that one dimple, and now the thought hit me like cold water: what if the woman who had been cooking for Lewis all these years wasn’t Amber?

What if it was Eleanor Dolton Lewis’s mother?

It would explain everything. The way she’d reacted the moment she saw the Stone of Duality hanging at my throat. The rawness in her eyes, the way her breath had caught. That hadn’t been a stranger’s response. That had been something deeply personal.

Eleanor wasn’t dead. She had never been dead.

I thought of Sheila’s last whispered words about Lady Rose, how I had pointed every suspicion at Amber. But what if I had been wrong this whole time? What if it had always been Eleanor alive, hidden, watching?

I staggered back, the pieces assembling themselves whether I wanted them to or not. Lady Rose had been pulling strings behind Sheila, engineering my death in my first life. The fire, the chaos, the calculated manipulation that old witch had turned Eleanor into a weapon, made her believe Jeffrey was her enemy, and pointed her grief like a blade. Eleanor had survived the fire. Lewis had been taken to the Hales. And she had simply... vanished from the world.

Her only reason to keep breathing had been revenge.

Then Lewis had left the country, and she had followed cloaked in Amber’s face, in Amber’s name to stay close to him. To protect him, I had assumed. But what if her being near him had never been about protection at all?

What if she had wanted me dead from the very beginning?

She had been closer to Wisteria than almost anyone. And Wisteria had been behind everything. There was no way Eleanor hadn’t known.

I had never actually seen Lewis’s mother before all I had to go on was Jeffrey’s description of that dimple. But Lewis had lived beside this woman for over a decade. How could someone as sharp as him not have noticed?

A chill moved through me as I watched the two of them exchange a quiet smile across the room. Eleanor disappeared into the kitchen, and Lewis walked toward me, a child settled in each arm, looking perfectly at ease.

"What’s wrong, Riley? You’ve gone somewhere else."

"Nothing." The word came out unsteady. "I forgot my medicine. I’ll go get it."

I turned and moved quickly, my legs not quite cooperating. He caught me before I stumbled one arm still holding both children, the other reaching out on instinct.

I pulled away before his touch could settle and kept walking.

Back in my room, I paced. My instincts were loud, restless, pulling in every direction. Eleanor was Eleanor, and Lewis was Lewis I kept telling myself to hold that line, to not let one bleed into the other. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had known, that he had been standing beside me all this time with this truth folded quietly inside him.

And Eleanor she had wanted me gone. Did she still? Had that old witch handed her a new purpose? 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

My children.

The thought cut through everything else and I was out the door before I’d finished thinking it, nearly walking straight into Lewis’s chest.

"Riley "

"I was going to check on the babies."

"They were just changed."

"I must have lost track."

He guided me back inside without argument, settled both children onto the bed, and drew me down onto his lap. His arms came around my waist, steady and unhurried, and for a moment neither of us spoke.

"You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?"

Of course I had. And of course he knew I had.

"If I hadn’t," I said quietly, "how long were you going to keep this from me, Lewis?" The laugh that came out of me had no warmth in it.

He pressed his face against my shoulder and held me tighter. "I’m just glad you didn’t give up on me."

"Idiot." My voice broke slightly despite myself. "After everything how could I ever doubt what you feel for me? But this... the way you handled this. You knew who she was, didn’t you? You knew the whole time."

"Not the whole time," he said. "For years she only came to me as Amber, so I believed she was my aunt. It wasn’t until the real Amber surfaced that I started seeing the cracks. I couldn’t be certain at first. But when you disappeared " His arms tightened. "I needed to find you. I needed to make it right. I went after Emerald Dragon hard, and my strikes kept landing clean not just because of the Blackwells, but because someone was feeding me information. Someone precise. Someone who knew more than they should have." He paused. "We’d been hunting Lady Rose for so long. Eventually, I had a strong feeling I knew who she was."

"Did you ever acknowledge it? Either of you?"

He shook his head. "No. I kept it from you and from her. She refused to let me call her mother. The guilt was eating her alive. And I felt guilty toward you because of what she had done. I didn’t want to pull everything apart when things were finally quiet. So I pretended not to know. I didn’t expect you to get there so fast."

I reached over and pinched his side, harder than necessary.

"You are terrifyingly good at playing neutral."

"I’m sorry, Riley." The guilt in his eyes was real. "She’s still my mother."

I looked at him for a long moment, then let out a slow breath. Some things couldn’t be argued with. "Fine. But do you know why she did all of it?"

He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. "I dug around. I have a general picture."

"Then tell me."

"It’s simpler than it looks," he said. "Brynn used her used her grief and her rage to settle a score with my father. But Eleanor was never fully hers. She played along just enough to earn Brynn’s trust, and then she used that position to feed us intelligence. The information she passed along wasn’t something anyone could have gathered in a few months. She had been building it for years."

"But she was so close to Wisteria."

Lewis nodded slowly. "Yes. Because from the very start, her real target was never the Hales."

He looked at me, and something in his expression made my chest go still.

"Her target was you, Riley."

I didn’t move. "Me?"