Chapter 1842:

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I forced the judgment and fear I’d felt earlier to recede, and in their absence I felt… compassion. Maybe, like me, she had been Catherine’s prisoner too. She had lived in a cage of her own, forced to live a life she never would have chosen for herself.

I could understand that.

So I told her, “I forgive you.”

Her eyes widened just slightly. She hadn’t expected that. She didn’t think she deserved it.

I wasn’t even sure I meant it entirely, but I knew she deserved to have that weight lifted off her.

“I…” Her gaze drifted to Sera, who had stayed quietly seated on the edge of the desk, watching as Evelyn lifted the curse. I turned to look at Sera too.

She smiled at us, and I wondered what she saw: two women who were maybe, in their own ways, a little lost in the world. She had found us, had given us something more than what life had originally set aside for us.

𝖡е 𝗍h𝗲 𝘧𝗂𝗿𝗌t 𝘁о 𝘳𝗲𝘢𝗱 𝗈n 𝘨𝘢𝗅n𝗈v𝖾𝗅𝘴.co𝗆

“Thank you, Mireya,” she said, finding the words Evelyn couldn’t.

“And thank you, Evelyn,” she added, finding the words I couldn’t say.

Sera found me in the garden as the sun began to set, tinting the flowers in shades of pink and amber.

The air was sweetened by the mingled scents of the blossoms growing around me, and the soft rustle of leaves blended with the faint hum of bees gathering as evening fell.

Olivia and I had tended a garden like this one back home, which was why I almost never came here. It reminded me, painfully, of home — of everything I had lost.

And yet, over the past week, I found myself coming here more and more, abandoning all the countless tasks I’d used to distract myself.

“I wonder what it is about this place,” Sera began, settling onto the wooden bench beside me, “that makes it so easy for people to leave.”

I turned to her, frowning.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged and crossed her legs. I was struck again by how effortlessly serene she always seemed.

When we first met, she had been a force of nature. I would never forget the defiant spark in her eyes as she stood her ground against Damian’s men and the other bidders, refusing to back down after that dangerous purchase. But back then, she’d seemed to be constantly fighting something, holding something back.

Lately, though, she looked the way I longed to feel: light, as if she had finally set down some weight she’d been carrying. Free.

“Evelyn left yesterday,” she told me. “Not long before Lucian did.”

“Oh.”

That was news to me. After removing the curse and replacing it, I hadn’t seen Evelyn again. I knew she spent most of her time in Lucian’s hospital room, and it wasn’t as if we’d suddenly become close enough that I would have gone looking for her.

Still, hearing that she’d gone, a strange feeling spread through me. It was like reaching for the last slice of pizza and finding someone had already taken it.

“And now you.”

I blinked, looking at Sera.

“What?”

She propped her cheek on one hand and smiled, sweet and knowing, as if she already had the answer.

.

.

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