“Your love is not wrong. Your fear is. Choose courage, and the bond holds. Choose fear, and it unravels.”
The room hums, like her words echo inside the walls themselves.
Then she glances toward the door—like she sees something we can’t yet.
“Threads hold when they are chosen,” she murmurs. “Yours. And his.”
The scent of roses deepens.
And she’s gone.
Vanished like she was never there at all—except the air still tastes like sea spray and revelation.
A heartbeat passes. Two.
Then—
A quiet, polite knock.
Draco and I stare at each other, barely breathing.
He moves first, crossing the room in three long strides and pulling open the door.
A vet tech stands there, smiling gently, holding Lucky’s leash.
And Lucky—groggy, cone askew, tail thumping against the hallway wall—wobbles inside like he’s been waiting two thousand years to come home.
I drop to my knees. Draco drops beside me.
Our hands meet in Lucky’s fur.
We both break.
Not loudly—just the quiet, shuddering kind of relief that feels like surviving something you didn’t realize was killing you.
When we finally look at each other again, everything is unspoken and understood.
Courage.
Love.
Choice.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s tell our story.”
Draco presses his forehead to mine.
“Together.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Charity
We barely moved for a long time after Fortuna vanished. Just settled onto the hotel bed with Lucky sleeping between us, letting the world drift back into its normal shape.
When my hands finally stopped shaking, we called a journalist Laura recommended, Nora Mann. She listened without interrupting, her voice steady as stone, and when we told her we wanted to speak on the record, she simply said, “Come tomorrow at ten, if that works. You can tell the truth in your own words.”
Now, standing in front of the hotel mirror while the city hums outside the window, I try to breathe slowly enough to steady my heartbeat. In a few hours, millions of people will see me as I truly am for the first time. Not my parents’ daughter. Not a headline. Just… me.
