Then she blinked, and the child returned.
“Mom!” she cried, running to me with open arms.
I hesitated. Was Zara right? Was the Scholar? Would Olivia be my undoing?
No.Not yet.I forced the thoughts away and knelt, arms outstretched.
She threw herself into my embrace, clutching my legs like a lifeline. “I missed you, Mom!”
My throat tightened. I couldn’t speak.
Then the door creaked again.
Jack entered the room, and the joy vanished like smoke. He froze in the doorway, eyes locking on mine—and in that instant, his entire body went rigid. The color drainedfrom his face.
“Mom’s home,” Olivia said brightly, then skipped away, leaving silence in her wake.
“Jack…” My voice broke. My heart thundered against my ribs, memories of the past year and a half flooding me with guilt and fire. My affair with Raul. The child born of dark passion. The poisons I had brewed to kill my own daughter. My visits with John James and Malik. My betrayal of everything I once swore to protect.
I stepped toward him, small and shaking like a lamb approaching a butcher.
“I’m sorry I was gone so long,” I whispered, the lie coating my tongue.
Jack didn’t move.
Arms crossed. Jaw locked. Eyes like frostbite. His silence was louder than any scream.
He didn’t need to speak. I already knew.
I wasn’t welcome here.
But I was done shrinking and done pretending.
So, I stood taller. Took a breath.
No matter what happened next, I would live.
With or without their forgiveness.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again, the words falling flat in the heavy silence between us. My voice was small, nearly swallowed by the thick, unmoving air. Jack’s face remained frozen in a grimace, his expression hard and unreadable. He said nothing. The space between us was filled with everything we weren’t saying.
“I searched everywhere for the Moon Dagger,” I offered, desperate to bridge the chasm.
He tilted his head, squinting at me through one eye, suspicious.
I shifted uneasily under his stare. My voice faltered. “It was all for nothing. I came home empty-handed. But I’m not the same woman who left, Jack. I’ve changed. You have to believe me. I love you. I don’t want a divorce.”
Something in his face softened—just barely. A flicker of the man I once knew passed through his eyes. He stepped closer, his voice low, heavy with conflicted emotion.
“Okay,” he said, the word thick and slow, like it cost him something to say. “We can try.”
He reached for me, and we embraced—tight, like people clinging to the wreckage of something long since sunk.
But as I melted into his arms, my mind betrayed me.
I thought of Raul’s rough hands, fire, and hunger in his kiss. With Raul, I had felt devoured, unraveled, worshipped, and ruined all at once. Jack’s embrace felt pale by comparison—safe, yes, but uninspired. Passionless. His love was steady. Raul was consuming. And part of me hated myself for craving the fire over the calm.
When we finally pulled apart, Jack said, “You should see Lee. He’s been worried sick since you vanished.”
