I didn't cry during dinner.
Not when Julian called me a "blonde fantasy."
Not when Grandma Drevane snapped, "Disappearing into the role is your only job."
Not even when Cassian said "She'll wear black" like it was a funeral directive.
I held it all behind my eyes—this brittle dam of Selene's smile—while my real self drowned in the saffron foam. Has it come to this? I thought, gripping the swan-shaped napkin Clarisse gave me. After years of burying myself in my mother's library to escape Marcella's cruelty… I've just been traded like a defective stock portfolio?
By the time I reached my suite, the dam was cracking.
I didn't turn on the lights. Didn't look in the mirror. Just stumbled into the bathroom and tore off Selene's ivory gown like shedding a second skin. The platinum wig came next—a lie I'd worn for twelve hours—leaving my roots exposed: dark as midnight, bleeding into ashy gold. A half-person. A half-life.
I turned the shower to scalding.
Steam swallowed the room, thick as the silence I'd swallowed all evening. I pressed my forehead against the cold marble tile and let the water hit me like a fist. Just breathe. Just—
The first sob tore out of me like a trapped animal.
Then another. And another. Until I was on my knees, clawing at the soap dish, screaming into the roar of the water. Why didn't I run? Why didn't I fight? Marcella's threats echoed: Your mother's library—sold off, piece by piece. But what was a library without the woman who filled it with life? Without her?
Mama.
The word shattered me.
I remembered her hands—rough from restoring manuscripts, warm as sunbaked stone—as she tucked me into bed after Marcella's first "you're not mine" speech. "Real power isn't in palaces, ma chérie," she'd whispered, massaging my palm. "It's in knowing who you are when no one's watching."
But here? In this gilded cage? Who am I?
The quiet librarian?
The proxy bride?
The girl who bleached her soul to survive?
I scrubbed at my scalp until the water ran pink—blood or bleach, I couldn't tell—trying to scour away the shame. Sold off. To a stranger. By family. The Drevanes hadn't even asked what I wanted. Just draped me in silk and called it a wedding. Three days. A lifetime reduced to a footnote in their dynasty's ledger.
I slid down the tile, hugging my knees. The steam blurred everything—the room, the future, the past. And in that haze, I saw her.
Mama.
Not the ghost in my memory, but real. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her library, sunlight catching the silver in her hair. She wasn't reading. She was watching me—eight years old, hiding behind Don Quixote after Marcella called me "a burden."
"You think silence is weakness, mon coeur?" she'd murmured, pulling me onto her lap. "But silence is a vault. And inside? A revolution." Her fingers traced the scar on her wrist—a burn from restoring a medieval codex. "This pain? It's the ink of my story. Never let anyone erase your words."
The vision faded with the steam.
I was alone again. Knees raw against marble. Throat raw from swallowed screams. But in the hollow where despair lived, something sparked.
Her words.
Not "be strong." Not "survive."
"Never let anyone erase your words."
I pressed my palms flat against the wet tile. They think I'm a ghost. A mannequin. A blonde-haired placeholder. But Mama knew—silence isn't empty. It's loaded.
I stood up.
Water sluiced over me, washing away tears but not the fire. I reached for the towel—and froze.
A thought suddenly flashed through my mind. I sensed that someone might be a serious threat in this mission.
I had a hard time trying to remember who it was.
Finally, it came to me.
Lysandra. Cassian's sister. The grenade in a ballgown. The girl who kicked off her heels and smirked, "You're not her, are you?"
She's the only one who sees me.
My pulse hammered. This changes everything. Not some shadowy rival. Not a stranger. Lysandra. The one who'd whispered "Tell Cass I said his new toy's got spine" under the table. The girl who kicked my ankle like a secret handshake.
I dried my hair roughly, the towel catching on my roots—dark and gold, fighting for dominance. Then I did something Selene would never do. Something Marcella would call "reckless."
I left the wig on the floor.
Wrapped in a robe, I walked to the balcony. The storm had passed. Below, the Orada sea glittered under a million stars. Mama loved nights like this, I thought, pressing a hand to the cold railing. She'd say the stars were stories waiting to be told.
I closed my eyes. Felt the salt on my lips. The ache in my bones.
This isn't the end of my story, I whispered to the sea. It's the first line.
And for the first time since stepping onto that Drevane jet, I didn't feel like a proxy.
I felt like Amara.
.