LOGINKNOX’S POVRayana scoffs.“As if. My mother would never let Katherine Volkvov wallow. Not in this life and certainly not in whatever comes after.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, graceless and completely unbothered by it. “I’m certain Beatrice and Katherine are still the best of friends. Probably driving everyone on the other side absolutely mad with their scheming. And Alexei—” She pauses, and the gentleness in her voice when she says my father’s name is something I wasn’t prepared for. “He’s there too. Only without the beast. He’s just a man now. A man who loves a woman and they have forever to make up for everything that went wrong in their lifetime.”I close my eyes and breathe in. The image she’s painted — my father without the monster, my mother without the fear, the two of them somewhere beyond this house and this curse with nothing between them except the love that started everything — is so unbearably kind that it sits in my chests and makes everything lighter.
KNOX’S POV“I know you’ve been told I’m terminal and I know you think that means years, maybe, or months at least, because that’s what terminal sounds like from the outside — a long, slow, dignified decline with time to prepare.” She pulls her arms tighter around herself and I can see her hands shaking and the grey of her skin and the thinness of her wrists and the blood she coughed up on the plane and all of it rearranges itself into a picture I should have read hours ago. Days ago. “I have two weeks. Maybe less. The herbs that have been keeping me upright are failing. Dr. Patel told me at the summit when you left with Ember — the updated scans, the bloodwork, all of it — and I was sitting in the corridor afterwards crying like an idiot when Rafael found me.”Her words land and rearrange everything I thought I understood about the woman sitting beside me. Six months — that’s what she told everyone. Six months at most.Enough time to plan, to prepare, to say goodbyes at a reasonable p
KNOX’S POV“I said I’m not doing this, Rayana.”“And I said we should have turned the plane around and you didn’t listen to that either.” She pulls her knees up, mirroring my position, two people sitting in a haunted hallway like children who’ve been sent to their rooms. “You’re doing exactly what your father did. You know that, right? Alexei pushed away everyone who tried to love him. Your mother tried to save him and he locked her in this house. I tried to love you and you walled me out until I ran. Celeste tried and you—”“Don’t say her name.”“Celeste tried and you refused to give her the one thing she needed and she broke under the weight of being loved by a man who couldn’t love back without conditions, and now you are doing the exact same thing with Ember. Stonewalling and pushing away and convincing yourself she is just like your mother, just like Celeste — and she is NOT, Knox—”“Rayana—”“She is NOT Celeste. She didn’t cheat. She didn’t betray you. She stood in front of you
KNOX’S POVMy jaw locks so tight something in my temple pops and my eyes burn with a heat that has nowhere to go because I haven’t cried since I was a child in this hallway and I’m not going to start now.I’m NOT, I refuse to give this house the satisfaction of—Choose to stay.She couldn’t. She wrote the words and she couldn’t follow them.She told me to stay whole and she broke herself instead, and I’ve spent my entire life proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree because what did I do this morning?What did I do when the pain got bad enough, when Ember’s words hit the places that were already bleeding, when the room closed in and the only options were stay and feel it or run and numb it?I ran. I said “wouldn’t think of it” and I walked out and I flew to Switzerland.I left her standing in the snow screaming my name, and my mother is asking me from beyond the grave to do the one thing she couldn’t do and the one thing I have never once in my life been able to do, which
KNOX’S POVShe turns and walks back up the path toward the house, and the lights are on — warm yellow through old windows, the house glowing against the Swiss dusk like somewhere people lived and loved and were happy, which is the cruelest lie a house can tell.I glance toward the cemetery. Rayana is still at her mother’s grave, lost in her own grief. She doesn’t know what I’m holding. She doesn’t know what I’m about to walk into.I walk toward the house, and for a moment, it feels like being transported to a older time, not by any chance a simpler one, but one where I at least had a family.The front door opens the way it always did — a slight resistance in the hinges that my father never fixed.The kitchen is to the left. I don’t go in.I can see it from the hallway — the counter where my father lifted me up to watch my mother cook, the floor where they danced, the window where the morning light used to pour in and make everything golden and lying — and if I walk in there the memory
KNOX’S POV“I’m fine, Mathilde.”“You were always a terrible liar.” Her eyes drift toward the cemetery where Rayana is kneeling at her mother’s grave, whispering things and possibly sobbing.Mathilde’s whole face changes, lighting up with pure delight.“Is that — oh my. Is that your lady friend from years back? Rayana?” She clasps her hands together. “I can’t believe it. Look at the two of you, two mischievous peas as always. Your mothers would be beside themselves.”“Rayana and I aren’t together,” I say, and the correction lands heavier than it should. “We’re just here for the graves. We won’t be staying long.”Mathilde’s face falls — a quick, genuine sadness that she doesn’t bother to hide.“Oh. Well. That’s a shame. Katherine and Beatrice would have loved that, you know. They had it all planned from the time you two were in nappies.” She sighs. “But I always told them — always told Katherine, always told Beatrice, rest her soul — you two would eventually decide for yourselves who y
EMBER’S POVThe crowd murmurs agreement, curiosity rippling through the room.Knox extends his hand toward me.“Ember. Come here.”Every eye in the ballroom turns to me.My legs feel like they’re made of water. My heart is trying to escape through my ribcage.But Knox is waiting, his hand outstretc
EMBER’S POV“I need to run to the clinic.”Knox looks up from his phone, distracted by whatever security nightmare Nathaniel is updating him on.“Everything okay?”“Dr. Patel has fresh bandages ready for Rayana’s dressing change.” I grab my jacket from the back of the chair. “Figured I’d pick them
EMBER’S POV“I can’t say I fully understand why you’d want her here,” he murmurs. “But I know you wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important to you. And whatever led you to that decision… I trust it wasn’t an easy one.”The understanding in his voice makes something loosen in my chest.“It wasn’t.”
EMBER’S POVDr. Patel nods, no judgment in her expression.“Do you want to take it now, or bring it with you?”“Now. Please.”She pours water from a pitcher on her desk and hands me the glass. I uncork the vial, and the smell hits me immediately — bitter and earthy, like something dug up from deep







