Page 135 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

She had just stepped into the foyer when she heard the hurried patter of footsteps. Lilibeth rounded the corner a moment later, her dark hair piled into a haphazard bun, a smear of butter still glistening on her cheek. Mrs. Thimble and Matilde had asked for the morning off, so her friends had offered to handle breakfast.

“Cassia!” Her face lit up. “We were wondering if you might⁠—”

She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes scanning Cassia’s face. Whatever she saw there changed everything. No questions. No prodding. Just that wordless instinct best friends develop after years of weathering each other’s storms.

Lilibeth opened her arms without hesitation. Cassia didn’t speak, didn’t try to explain. She just stepped into the hug and let it hold her together.

A moment later, Opalina appeared, already reading the room with a glance. She didn’t ask anything either. She simply crossed the space and laid a steadying hand between Cassia’s shoulder blades.

“Go upstairs,” Opalina said gently. “Take a long soak. We’ll make you a plate.”

Cassia nodded, gratitude rising sharp. She knew she should at least offer to help with the children’s breakfast—Opalina and Lilibeth were clearly busy—but she just didn’t have it in her.

An hour later, she stepped out of the tub in the teachers’ bathroom and found a pile of her spare clothes waiting, along with a note: ‘Come downstairs when you’re ready.’

The kitchen’s warmth enveloped her. Through the window, she saw the children playing outside. Someone had set a plate for her: toasted milk bread, eggs scrambled loose with butter, a spoonful of blackberry jam glistening on the side.

She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she smelled the food.

Lilibeth was standing at the stove, stirring something into a saucepan. Opalina sat at the table, her needle flashing steadily through a bolt of deep-plum fabric draped over her lap. They didn’t look up right away, treating it like any other morning.

Cassia sat. Her chair, as always, faced the garden. She wrapped her hands around a cup of tea and let the heat soak into her fingers. In silence, she ate—each bite mechanical. When she set the fork down, the cutlery clicked too loudly against the plate.

Her friends looked up. She drew a shaky breath.

“Ark’s father is dying.”

Lilibeth’s wooden spoon clattered against the pan. “The Daemar? He’s been ill?”

Cassia toyed with a crumb. “I shouldn’t be saying anything. It’s supposed to be a secret. But I need your help.”

“Of course,” Lilibeth said immediately. “Anything. But . . . is Arkenoth alright?”

Cassia looked down at her cup. The warmth was fading. “I don’t know. I had to send him away.” She met their gazes. “To spend what time he has left with his father.”

Lilibeth’s brow furrowed, and they both came to sit with her. Opalina reached out and squeezed her hand. “But he loves you.”

Her chest tightened. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

Love. What would their love become if it cost him his family? Would they ride off into the sunset knowing he’d severed any chance of making peace with his father during these final months? Would she? Even if she wanted to, even if she could, what kind of person would that make her?

The kind who took a son from his dying father. The kind who let her own desires make her selfish. The kind her mother raised her not to be.

She couldn’t be that person.

So she would be the other kind instead. The kind who walked away, so he didn’t have to.

“The Daemar loves his family,” she whispered. “Maybe not in ways that are easy to see, but it’s there. I saw it. And if I stayed, even with the best intentions, I’d cast shadows over the time they have left. I’d never forgive myself.”

“But it’s so unfair,” Lilibeth whispered.

Cassia almost smiled—a bitter, weary thing. Unfair was her oldest friend. Rejection letters. Empty pantries. A father who died too young and a mother who died thirty-five years too early. Why would this be any different?

She pushed Ark from her mind. It felt like dying, but the children needed her to live.

“There’s more,” she said. “Alderrath offered us one of his buildings. Cheap rent, stability, the works. In exchange, I shall never speak to Ark again. Pretend everything we shared was a lie.”

Lilibeth’s voice softened. “Are you accepting the offer, then?”