CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ramona satcross-legged on her bed, the grimoire open in her lap, the fox curled across her thighs like a warm, breathing, weighted blanket. She’d been staring at the same page for twenty minutes.
The curse-breaking spell.
It was right there. Written in Iris’s precise handwriting in the margins — translations, component lists, timing requirements. Everything Ramona would need to break a curse that had shaped her entire life.
Her sister had known the answer, and she’d had it in her hands for nearly two months.
Twomonths.
And before that — years of research, years of knowing something was wrong, years of watching Ramona struggle and fail and hate herself while Iris studied curse-breaking and said nothing.
The fox shifted, pressing its head against her hand. She scratched the downy fur around his ears, and he closed his eyes.
“I’m not broken,” Ramona whispered to the empty room.
The words should have felt liberating. Should have been a revelation, a weight lifting, the answer to a question she’d been asking her whole life.
Instead, they just felt hollow.
Because if she wasn’t broken, if her magic wasn’t fundamentally wrong, then what did that mean? That she’d spent twenty-seven years hating herself for nothing? That every failure, every disaster, every moment she’d felt inadequate or useless or fundamentallyless thaneveryone around her — all of it had been a lie?
That she could have beendifferent?
The thought was almost worse than thinking she was broken.
At least when she’d thought it was just her — just the way she was born — she could accept it. She could work around it, compensate, try harder. She could tell herself it wasn’t anyone’s fault, just bad luck, just the way magic worked for some people.
But knowing someone haddonethis to her?
Knowing Iris had done it, even accidentally, in a moment of sibling anger when she was eleven, and then spent the next twenty-seven years knowing and saying nothing?
Ramona’s hands were shaking. She gripped the grimoire tighter, knuckles going white.
The fox made a small, concerned sound.
“I’m fine,” Ramona said. Not to the fox. To herself. Testing the words.
They tasted like ash.
Who would she have been without the curse?
The question kept circling through her mind, relentless. Would her magic have worked properly? Would she have been confident? Powerful? Would she have stayed at Thornwood, built a career, been someone who mattered?
Would Simone have stayed? That thought hit like a punch to the gut.
If her magic had worked — if she hadn’t been the disaster witch who broke everything she touched — would Simone have looked elsewhere? Would Kate have seemed like a better option than a wife whose spells actually functioned?
Or would she still have left? Would Ramona still have been somehownot enough, curse or no curse?
She didn’t know. Couldn’t know. That was the worst part — the not knowing who she might have been.
The door opened softly. Ramona looked up.
Zara stood in the doorway, two mugs in her hands. She was still wearing the clothes from the heist — black jeans, dark shirt — but she’d taken off her shoes. Her hair was slightly mussed.
“Kashvi made tea,” Zara said quietly. “Well, Felix made tea. Kashvi tried to help and nearly set something on fire. Gerald supervised.”
