THE LIMO IS TAKINGme somewhere.
I don’t ask where. I can’t even find the energy.
The guards deposited me here after Devyn’s final words. Opened the door, guided me in with hands that were almost gentle, closed the door behind me. No explanation. No destination. Just the smooth hum of the engine and the blur of trees outside the tinted windows.
The leather seat is cold against my back. The AC hums at a frequency just below hearing, raising goosebumps on my arms. Amber light filters through the tinted glass, turning everything sepia-toned, like an old photograph. Like a memory already fading.
I should care where I’m being taken.
I don’t.
My eyes are swollen. My throat is raw. I’ve cried so much that my face feels like it belongs to someone else, puffy and hot and wrong.
You are unfit to be my queen.
You are hereby banished from my presence.
The words keep echoing. Over and over. A loop I can’t escape.
Something catches my eye. A glint of light from the built-in cabinet beside me. Absently, more out of reflex than curiosity, I reach over and open it.
A book.
Small. Leather-bound. Sparkling faintly in a way that seems almost deliberate, like it wants to be noticed.
I pick it up. It’s warm. Body temperature. The same impossible warmth I remember from another book, in another place, a lifetime ago.
I flip to the back.
There’s a bookplate. Elegant. Gold-edged.
Library of Hewhay.
My breath catches.
I open the book.
The pages are blank at first. Creamy white. Empty.
Then words begin to appear. Not printed. Not typed. They bloom onto the page like ink spreading through water, written by an invisible hand.
A choice, Bailey Sutton.
More words appear.
A) Turn to the next page to return to your old world and begin again.
B) Close the book and remain in this world.
My hands tremble.
Go back. I could go back. To my old life, my old world. Before Devyn. Before the wedding. Before I learned what it felt like to be seen, really seen, by someone who looked at me like I mattered.
Before I learned what it felt like to have that taken away.
My heart is raw from all the aching. My eyes are swollen and aching just as bad from all the tears I’ve cried.
But.
