“And now?”
“Now?” I look back at the mountains. “Now I have options. I could stay here. I could leave, go somewhere Stone Court can’t reach, try to build a new life.”
“Is that what you want?”
The question lodges in my chest like a splinter.
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” My voice breaks. “I don’t know if anything I feel is real. He spent sixteen years manufacturing me into someone who would need him, and now I do, and I can’t tell if it’s real or just… very effective conditioning.”
Miriam is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is softer.
“Can I tell you something? Something I’ve never said to anyone?”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
“I watched you grow up, Hannah. Watched you hover in doorways waiting for your parents to notice you. Watched you practice sword forms for hours hoping your father would look up from his anvil. Watched you bring your mother little gifts—wildflowers, pretty stones—and watched her set them aside without really seeing them.”
Something cracks in my chest. “You saw that?”
“Everyone saw it, child. We just didn’t talk about it.” She sighs. “Your parents weren’t bad people. They loved you, in their way. But they loved the forge more. Loved their work, their legacy, their place in the village. You were… an afterthought. Something they’d get around to when they had time. And they never had time.”
I’m crying. I didn’t notice when it started, but tears are streaming down my face and I can’t stop them.
“I spent my whole life trying to earn their attention,” I whisper. “And then they died, and I spent eight more years trying to be worthy of their memory. Protecting their forge. Carrying their legacy. Being the daughter they wanted instead of the one they had.”
“I know.” Miriam reaches out and takes my hand. Her skin is paper-thin, fragile, but her grip is strong. “And your Fae lord saw that hunger in you. That desperate need to be seen, to matter, to beenoughfor someone. He used it. Cultivated it. Made sure no one else could fill that void so you’d have no choice but to turn to him.”
“He’s a monster.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t flinch from the word. “But here’s what I’ve learned in eighty-seven years of living: monsters aren’t born from nothing. And the cages they build aren’t always made of bars. Sometimes they’re made of loneliness. Of neglect. Of being invisible in your own home.”
She squeezes my hand.
“He didn’t create your isolation, Hannah. He just perfected it. The foundation was already there—laid by parents who didn’t see you, by a village that used you, by a world that needed you to be strong and never once asked if you could bear it.”
“That doesn’t make what he did okay.”
“No.It doesn’t.” She releases my hand and turns to face me fully. “But it means you have a choice that’s more complicated than ‘monster or not monster.’ You can hate him for what he did and still acknowledge that he saw you when no one else did. You can rage at his manipulation and still admit that being claimed by him felt like finally beingseen.”
I want to deny it. Want to say that’s not true, that what I felt was all conditioning, all biology, all the carefully constructed trap he’d been building for sixteen years.
But I can’t. Because she’s right.
He saw me. From the very beginning, he saw me—not as a tool, not as an afterthought, not as a burden to be managed. He watched me for sixteen years because Imatteredto him. Because I was worth watching. Because something in me caught his attention and held it for longer than my own parents ever managed.
That’s fucked up. That’s so fucked up I can’t even begin to untangle it.
But it’s also true.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” I ask, and my voice sounds like something broken. “How am I supposed to forgive someone who spent sixteen years destroying my life just so he could be the one to save me?”
“I don’t know if you’re supposed to forgive him.” Miriam pushes herself to her feet with a grunt. “That’s not really the question, is it? The question is what you’re going to do now. Are you going to stay here and die—slowly, in a village that loves the idea of you more than it ever lovedyou? Or are you going to figure out what you actually want, and then fight for it the way you’ve fought for everything else in your life?”
“I can’t go back. Not after what he did.”
“Can’t?” She raises an eyebrow. “Or won’t?”
I don’t have an answer.
