"Cecilion?" Lady Dyadia's voice was soft. "What are you doing here at this hour?"
She didn't sound surprised. She never did.
Her long, straight, brown hair shimmered faintly under the dim chandelier light, cascading down her back like a silk curtain. Those warm hazel eyes—soft, unreadable, like desert dunes kissed by dusk—met his, and something in him recoiled without moving.
She looked just like Zixuan.
The resemblance was uncanny—same shape of the eyes, same timbre in their voice, same subtle tilt of the head when speaking with care. Zixuan had inherited almost every feature from her.
And Cecilion? He didn't look anything like her. Not even a little. There were no echoes of her in his eyes, no trace of her in his bone structure or the curve of his mouth. The people who didn't know the truth—who weren't buried in the mire of their family's secrets—never assumed he was her son.
And why would they?
