I kept my word. I didn't make Elara believe me. I gave her the means to find the truth herself, and then I did the hardest thing of all I waited, and let her.
We stayed at the estate three days. I could have pressed her, rushed her, used the Founding Moon's approach as leverage to force a fast choice. Vale would have. Damien would have. Instead I let a girl who'd been given a false self her whole life take the time to find her real one, because a choice made under pressure is just another cage, and I'd promised her the one thing no one had ever given her: a decision that was actually hers.
She spoke to the old servants. That was the thing that turned it, in the end not my words, but theirs. Because some of those old Hale-loyal servants had been at the estate a long time, long enough to r
