“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“If you allow it.”
She absorbs that word.Allow. “You don’t need my permission to be with your daughters.”
“No.”
“But you’re asking, anyway.”
“Yes.”
Sofia’s small hand presses against Evie’s chest. Evie looks down. Her voice changes slightly when she says, “Good.”
I accept it as more than it appears to be. Because it is. A month ago, I would have ordered the room staffed, the schedule fixed, the risks removed by force of structure.
Now I ask. Not because authority has become less available. Because it’s less useful here.
Lucia blinks up at me. “Your mother is difficult,” I tell her.
Evie’s head lifts. “Careful.”
“Your mother values accuracy,” I say.
“That’s better.”
“She’s also always listening.”
“As you should be.”
Lucia yawns. The movement is too small to justify the effect it has on me. I look away first, toward the window. The south garden is visible from here. The hedges. The fountain. The paths Evie knows better than the men assigned to guard them.
The house is quieter now. Not safer. But quieter.
Dante is gone. Not absent from consequence. Gone. Reports arrive twice a week through channels that do not carry his name unless necessary. Marseille. Then Valencia. Then nowhere stable. The account holds. The restrictions hold. Men who tested the boundary learned quickly.
He will try to return. Evie is right.
He’ll fail. I’ll make sure of that.
But his failure will not erase what came before.
Nothing does.
Epilogue
POV:Evie
There are eight exits from the garden. I still count them. French doors. Service gate. Greenhouse path. Iron-drive gate. Terrace steps. Kitchen passage. Low stone wall. Drainage arch beneath the west hedge.
Eight. The number arrives before thought, the way breath arrives before speech. Habit. Survival. Memory.
I don’t use any of them. That’s the important part.
Lucia is trying to eat a rosemary leaf. Again.
“No,” I tell her.
