Chapter 175: Chapter 175: Let her burn
Theobald Adler sat very still in the high-backed chair of his private study, a place that looked more like a temple than an office. The long wall of windows spilling city light across the marble and the faint hum of energy under the floor. When he drew a breath, the air shivered, a thousand tiny threads whispering at the edge of his perception. That was what divinity felt like when it was new, a network of lives and possibilities curling around him like smoke.
He was still learning to bear it. Still learning which voices to answer and which to ignore.
And yet through the haze of prayer requests and board reports, he could feel his wife like a needle in his palm.
Anna.
Even without trying, her little burst of fury at the restaurant had reached him; the sharp edges of her humiliation bled through the bond she’d begged for. The images that floated into his mind, silver cutlery clattering, a hand pressed theatrically to a swollen stomach, Elias’s pale suit vanishing through a door, were almost comical. She was doing exactly what she always did: turning nothing into a banner of pain.
He closed his eyes and let the sight sharpen.
Threads. Fate-strings. Some glowed gold, some grey, some brittle with impending endings. Around Anna they twisted, frantic and messy, but one thing was absent. The tiny, bright filament that should have been tied to the life inside her.
There was nothing. No soul, no thread, only a hollow weave.
Whatever she and Jonathan had done before the child was even born had cut it loose.
Theobald opened his eyes again, white flickering once in the black. So she was parading an empty legacy around a restaurant and clawing at her brother for a scrap of relevance. Of course she was.
He didn’t move when her voice floated faintly into his hearing from far across the city, the call to Jonathan, the acid sweetness in her tone. He didn’t move when he felt her scroll to Marco’s number, when he heard her lay out her plan in that honey-hard voice, pictures and insinuations lined up like knives.
He simply sat back, one long finger tapping against the carved armrest.
"She’s going to eat herself alive," he murmured into the quiet room. The sound of it echoed, soft and amused. "And she thinks she’s feeding the wolves."
He could see it as plainly as the skyline beyond the glass: Anna clawing her way into scandal after scandal, Jonathan turning his face away, and Marco clutching at the story like a drowning man. None of them realized that Victor Numen had already taken an interest and none of them realized that the brother they called useless was wrapped in the eye of something older than gods.
And as for the empty child in her belly, he only glanced once at the space where a thread should have been and let the silence fall back into place.
Theobald sat back in the dark of the penthouse, the city’s threads humming against his new senses like wires under tension. Since the moment of his ascension, he’d been watching them: the glittering lines of power that stitched the country together, the pulsing cables of fate that coiled through every building, every name.
Elias’s line was different. It had been even back when Matteo sniffed around him: a strange, bright filament that bent the air itself and warned anything with instincts not to touch. Theobald had seen it and left it alone. You didn’t grab a live wire unless you wanted to be burned.
Anna, though... Anna had never learned the difference between a fuse and a match.
He heard her heels before he saw her and felt her temper flaring across the suite. She swept in still bristling from the restaurant, perfume sharp, hands tight on her phone.
"I cannot believe him," she hissed, dropping into the seat opposite him. "He walked past me like I was nothing. My own brother."
Theobald let his gaze drift over her without moving, the new calm of godhood making his smile faint and slow. "You’re not nothing," he said mildly. "You’re just underestimating him."
She blinked at that, eyes narrowing. "Underestimating Elias? He’s a nobody who lucked into Victor Numen’s bed."
Theobald tilted his head, still watching the threads. "If you say so. But I’ve watched him longer than you have. He’s not soft. He’s... conductive." His mouth curved a little, humor without warmth. "Touch him wrong and you’ll find yourself holding lightning."
Anna gave a brittle laugh. "So what do you suggest? Sit here and be humiliated?"
He reached out and, very deliberately, brushed a thumb over the back of her hand, a gesture that looked like reassurance but felt like a leash. "I suggest you do what you’re best at. Whisper. Plant more questions than you already did. Let other hands do the work. You are the mate of a god."
Her pulse kicked at his touch; he could see it in the thread of her fate, trembling. "I can handle him," she said quickly. "I’ll continue to publish about him in press..."
"Good girl," Theobald murmured, lying without blinking. "I’ve already dealt with the restaurant. The staff won’t bother you again." He hadn’t touched a thing; it amused him to let her believe it.
Anna’s chin lifted, confidence returning under the false promise. "Then I’ll take care of the rest."
"Of course you will." His smile deepened, not kind at all. "Just remember, he’s still your brother. Don’t get too close."
She nodded, already scrolling through her contacts as she rose, muttering about headlines and photographs.
Theobald watched her go, still and serene, the wickedness in his new eyes unmasked. It wasn’t his place to raise her up again. It wasn’t his place to warn her or Jonathan. Let her burn her fingers on her own matches.
And as for the empty child she carried, he glanced once at the space where a thread should have been and then let the silence close over it.
He smiled then, the smile of a man who knows exactly how the game ends and intends to watch every move.