Visibility did not feel triumphant.It felt heavy.Liana had known it would, long before the first reactions rippled outward from her statement, long before analysts dissected phrasing and allies quietly recalibrated their public positions, long before Serov’s silence stretched from absence into something far more deliberate. Being seen was not the same as being understood, and she had not stepped into the light expecting applause. She had stepped into it knowing that light clarified edges, stripped away ambiguity, and left no room to pretend you were something you were not.Morning arrived without ceremony, pale and quiet, the estate waking in careful stages as though the building itself understood that the world outside had shifted overnight. Liana stood at the window of her room, watching fog thin over the grounds, her thoughts uncharacteristically still, not because there was nothing to consider, but because everything that mattered had already al
Last Updated : 2026-01-08 Read more