The Orada Sea tasted different here—sharper, wilder—than the gentle Mediterranean waves that lapped against my childhood villa in Monaco. I pressed my palms to the cool stone railing of Drevane Hall's balcony, breathing in the salt-tinged air. This isn't home, I reminded myself. Home was cobblestone streets and lemon trees. Home was the Mediterranean.
Below, the Orada churned against cliffs draped in wild lavender and olive groves—a slate-gray beast where the Mediterranean had been a sapphire cradle. Cassian's estate perched on this remote stretch of coast, miles from the Riviera's glitter, where the only sound was the sea's hungry roar. Of course they'd hide me here, I thought bitterly. Where even the water feels like a cage.
Back inside, I kicked Selene's platinum wig into the corner like trash. Let it gather dust. Then I turned the lock—one sharp click—and the sound echoed through the suite like a vow. No one gets to see me like this. Not the wig. Not the tears. Not the girl who bleached her soul to survive.
I crawled into the vast, white bed—the one that felt less like a sanctuary and more like a stage—and pulled the covers tight. The storm had passed, but my mind was still churning. Sleep wouldn't come. Not yet.
So I let the memories rise.
Fifteen years ago.
Sunlight streamed through the library's leaded glass windows, painting gold squares on Persian rugs in our Monaco villa. I was five, barefoot and laughing, chasing dust motes in the air. My mother knelt beside me, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, fingers tracing the spine of a first-edition Peter Rabbit.
"This one's special, ma chérie," she'd whispered, her voice warm as honey. "Beatrix Potter didn't win with magic. She won with kindness." She pressed the book into my hands. "Remember that. Kindness is the only currency that never devalues."
Across the room, my father—Papa, not the hollowed-out ghost he became later—threw his head back laughing. He'd just closed a deal that reshaped Monaco's skyline, but all he cared about was building me a blanket fort in the ballroom. "Princess Amara demands a castle!" he'd boomed, draping velvet curtains over dining chairs. I'd crowned him with a tiara of paper stars glued with glitter, and he'd worn it all evening, toasting Her Royal Highness with sparkling cider.
We were rich on the Mediterranean—sailing yachts at sunset, picnics on Cap d'Antibes beaches—but it wasn't the money that made us golden. It was the way Mama sang French lullabies while mending my torn dresses. The way Papa carried me on his shoulders through Monaco's flower markets, letting me choose bouquets that cost more than a servant's monthly wage. "You deserve the world, mon coeur," he'd say, tucking a rose behind my ear. "And I'll spend my life giving it to you."
We were a family of three. A perfect circle on the Mediterranean coast.
The fracture came on a Tuesday.
Mama didn't come home from the library restoration site. A car accident—wet roads on the Corniche, a truck that ran a red light—and just like that, the circle shattered.
Papa didn't cry. He froze.
At the funeral, he stood like a statue in a black suit, gripping my hand so tight it left bruises. "Be strong, Amara," he'd murmured, but his eyes were already miles away. "We must be strong."
Then Marcella arrived.
She moved into our Mediterranean villa like a shadow, her silver-blonde hair and Selene in tow. "I'll take care of everything," she promised, kissing Papa's cheek with lips too red, too practiced. And Papa, drowning in grief, let her.
At first, it was subtle.
Papa stopped carrying me on his shoulders. Stopped taking me to the Monaco harbor to feed the seagulls. He buried himself in boardrooms while Marcella redecorated my mother's library—replacing rare manuscripts with her crystal sculptures. "Grief is messy, darling," she'd sigh, watching me trace the new marble countertops where Mama's oak desk once stood. "We must move forward."
Then came the cuts.
• The villa staff reduced from twelve to three.
• My private tutor replaced with online courses.
• The Mediterranean sailboat sold to "streamline assets."
"We're not as rich as we were, Amara," Papa finally admitted one night, avoiding my eyes. "Marcella's right. We must adapt."
Adapt. The word that killed us.
I became invisible—a ghost in my own home. While Selene got riding lessons and Riviera galas, I retreated to the library's surviving corner, reading by flashlight after Marcella locked the main room. "You're wasting time with those dusty books," she'd sneer. "No one will marry a girl who smells like old paper."
Papa never corrected her.
Now, lying in this sterile bed on the Orada coast, I finally let the tears come—not for the wig, not for the wedding, but for the girl who'd lost two mothers. The first to death. The second to greed.
You were never mine. But you will serve me. Marcella's words hissed in the dark.
I pressed my face into the pillow, muffling my sobs. Mama wouldn't recognize me now. The quiet librarian who bleached her hair to survive. The girl who traded her soul for a library.
But then—a memory surfaced.
Ten years ago—when I was fifteen—crouched behind Don Quixote after Marcella called me "a burden."
Mama kneeling, her hands rough from restoring manuscripts.
"You think silence is weakness, mon coeur?"
"But silence is a vault. And inside? A revolution."
The tears slowed.
I sat up, wiping my face with the back of my hand. The Orada Sea isn't the Mediterranean. But I'm still Amara Veyron.
I swung my legs out of bed.
"Real power isn't in palaces," Mama's voice whispered on the wind. "It's in knowing who you are when no one's watching."
I am the girl who remembers the Mediterranean.
And for the first time since boarding that Drevane jet, I didn't feel shattered.
I felt like a getting a proper rest aster remembering Mama's words.