Chapter 17: What Shrinking Costs

Aurelia's POV

I didn't sleep well after the dinner. I lay awake replaying Vivienne's voice at the table.....*these things happen, some women simply take longer than others*.....and Cassian's silence sitting right beside it, just as loud in its own way.

By the time I gave up trying to sleep, it was almost eleven. I sat up against the headboard, phone in hand, and called Rosa without really deciding to, she picked up on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep she hadn't bothered pretending she wasn't in.

"Aurelia? It's nearly eleven. What's wrong?"

And that was all it took, the dam I'd been holding up all evening simply gave out.

"She did it again," I said, my voice breaking halfway through the sentence. "In front of guests this time.....Bianca's mother, the garden committee women....all of them, sitting there while Vivienne asked the whole table why I still haven't given Cassian a child, like it's a factual question anyone's entitled to an answer to."

"Oh, sweetheart."

"And Cassian just sat there. He said *not tonight*, like it was the timing that was the problem, not the fact that his mother does this to me constantly and he never once tells her to stop. Bianca held my hand across the table and told me not to feel rushed, like she was doing me some kind of favor, and I just sat there and thanked her. I *thanked* her, Rosa."

"You did what you had to do to get through dinner. That's not a failure."

"It feels like one." I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes, furious at myself for crying over something I'd absorbed a hundred times before without falling apart. "I don't know why tonight broke something that didn't break the last fifty times she's done this."

There was a pause on the line, long enough that I could hear Rosa moving, sitting up properly now, giving this the attention she always gave things that mattered.

"I think I know why," she said finally.

"Why?"

"Because for once, you have something to compare it to." Her voice was gentle, but there was no softening the truth underneath it. "You've spent years believing this is simply what marriage costs....that shrinking yourself at that table, swallowing what she says, thanking people for kindness that isn't kindness at all.....that this is just the price of being Cassian's wife. And now you know a man who doesn't require any of that from you, who notices you without you having to earn it first."

I didn't answer, because there wasn't a way to argue with that without lying to her.

"That's not a small thing to learn, Aurelia," she went on. "It's terrifying, actually, once you see it clearly, because it means the way you've been living isn't the only way to live and once you realize that, it becomes much harder to keep making yourself smaller for others.”

"So what am I supposed to do? Stand up at the table and tell Vivienne to stop?"

"Maybe not tomorrow but you can stop thanking people for their cruelty, dressed up as concern. You can stop apologizing for things that aren't your fault, you can start noticing the moments when you go quiet just to keep the peace, and ask yourself whose peace it's actually protecting." She let that settle for a moment before continuing, softer now.

"You've spent four years disappearing a little at a time in that house, sweetheart. I've watched it happen, I just never knew how to say it to you without it sounding like criticism, because it isn't....It's grief, I grieve it every time I see you."

My throat tightened so hard I couldn't speak for a moment.

"I don't know how to stop," I said finally, my voice small.

"You don't have to know the whole way, you just have to stop believing you deserve to keep disappearing, the rest tends to follow, once you actually believe that part." She paused. "Small things first. Don't thank Bianca for her poison next time....just say nothing at all. Silence isn't shrinking, if you choose it on purpose instead of out of fear."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, feeling steadier than I had all evening, though nothing about my actual situation had changed at all.

"Thank you," I said. "For answering.....even this late."

"You could call me at three in the morning and I'd answer, Aurelia. That's not something you ever need to thank me for." Her voice softened further. "Go to sleep now, Tomorrow's the gala committee's final walkthrough at the venue, isn't it? You'll want to be steady for that."

"It is."

"Then be steady....not small, there's a difference, and I think you're finally close enough to learn it."

We said goodnight, and I set the phone down on the nightstand, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, turning her words over slowly instead of turning over Vivienne's, for once.

*Steady, not small.*

I didn't know yet what that would look like tomorrow, standing in a room full of board members and vendors and, almost certainly, Cassian introducing important people to everyone except his own wife the way he so often forgot to.

But for the first time in longer than I could remember, I went to sleep thinking about what I wanted to change, instead of only what I wanted to survive.