The tether beneath my ribs pulses again, but this time the sensation does not feel like accusation.
It feels like inheritance.
“She did not want you to carry what she carried,” Lucian continues, “and she did not want you to suppress alone.”
Atticus’s palm presses more firmly at my waist.
“You were never meant to hold it by yourself,” he says quietly.
The dungeon hum steadies further, and the resonance beneath the stone feels calmer now that the truth has been spoken aloud.
“She did not die because she was weak,” Lucian says.
The words hit harder than anything else he has said.
“She died because she chose containment over collapse.”
Silence follows, but it is not empty.
It is full of reframed memory.
All the nights she insisted on staying upright. All the times she hid her pain.
