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Bryony gasped.

The red light went out.

Her fingers moved over my cheek. “Mine.”

“Your voice?”

“Mine.”

I covered her hand with mine and stayed on the floor until the room settled around us.

Elias checked her pulse again. “Slow, but steady. What happened to you?”

I rose and sat beside Bryony. Telling the truth in Cecily’s room had once felt like cutting old damage open. This was different. The damage remained, but the memory belonged to the woman who had lived it.

“The Crown forced Cecily’s last moments into me,” I said. “All of them this time.”

Bryony kept her hand in mine. “What changed?”

“I saw her resist. She moved one finger, said my name and lifted her chin. She understood what I was about to do.”

“Did she ask you to kill her?”

“She didn’t have enough control for that. My name was the only word she managed.”

“Then how do you know what she meant?”

The question cut through the answer I wanted to give.

“The Crown forced her chin down,” I said. “She raised it again. She looked at the guards, then the human they were about to kill. When she looked back at me, she exposed her throat.”

“You believe she was choosing death.”

“Yes.”

“Believing isn’t the same as knowing.”

“I know she resisted. I know she understood where my mouth was going. I know she made it easier for me to reach her artery while the Crown tried to stop her.”

Bryony nodded slowly. “Then those are the facts. You don’t need to make them bigger.”

“They feel big enough.”

“I imagine they do.”

Elias went very still. “You’re sure it wasn’t the Crown changing the memory?”

“It wanted to hurt me with the killing. It showed me more than it meant to.”

“Or it wanted you to believe Cecily chose death,” Bryony said.

I had expected comfort. Her doubt was better.

“I thought of that. The memory didn’t make me innocent. It included everything I failed to do before the chapel. It included her fighting the Crown when it tried to hide the movement.”

Elias asked whether the memory had been mine or Cecily’s. It was mine, stripped of the gaps I’d spent a century protecting. I had seen her eyes clear and felt her finger catch my coat. I simply hadn’t understood either at the time.

He reminded me that I had been under command while the chapel collapsed around us. That wasn’t the whole answer. I had spent months training myself to see Cecily’s fear instead of her resistance. By the last night, I expected the Crown to speak whenever she opened her mouth.