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Gone forever.

“Damian, it’s okay.” Her troubled expression slips away, replaced with tenderness.

Tenderness I don’t deserve.

“I’ve learned a lot these past few months. My whole worldview has crumbled and fallen away. I won’t lie and say that I’m not… I’m heartbroken. It feels like my dad is dead in a way. And I still love the man I thought he was. I think maybe I’ll always love him—the person who never existed.”

Her lips lift in a brave little smile, and it hits me like a knife to the chest.

“But I’ve learned that good and evil… They don’t cancel each other out. They just exist. Sometimes side by side. Sometimes in the same person. And love doesn’t ask for permission from your conscience. It stays put, right or wrong.”

I shut my eyes. What on earth can I say to her?

This little speech is for me. To makemefeel better. Because that’s how my precious girl works. She puts others first, even when her own heart is shattering.

Innocence isn’t weakness. It’s defiance. It’s choosing softness in a world that punishes it.

And I’ll do anything to preserve it in her.

She’ll be safe from The Four Hundred. I’ll make sure of it.

I wrap my arms around her, squeezing her against my chest. The shock must be wearing off, because she starts to shake—quietly at first, like her body’s trying to hold it in. But then the sobs break through, and her tears soak into my shirt.

I sit in silence, holding the only thing I’ve ever loved, knowing every second is a splinter. Soon, I’ll be nothing but a bleeding shape she leaves behind.

49

Ava

Three weeks.

It’s been three weeks since Damian became Prior of Thornecroft. Three weeks since Kane and Coraline were sent away—Kane to some undisclosed location, and Coraline to her father’s estate in France. Three weeks since we returned from that island, victorious yet somehow broken.

Three weeks since I’ve seen Damian.

Winter quarter has started at Ashford. I go to class. I take notes. I raise my hand when I’m supposed to. But it’s all hollow, like I’m playing the part of a student in someone else’s life.

I had to tell my dad that I wouldn’t be coming home for Christmas, and it was the strangest call of my life. I was talking to two people at once. One—the man who’d pressed my ham and cheese sandwiches with cookie-cutter hearts and stars when I was a little girl. The other—a high priest of a cruel organization. A man who threatened to shoot Damian right in front of me.

I sensed my dad’s pulsing anxiety on our phone call, though I’m sure he thought he hid it well. Maybe he’d remembered his“Bug” slip. Or maybe he wondered if Damian had told me who he is. Either way, I could feel the tension in his pauses, in the gentle way he probed about why I couldn't go home.

Apparently, I’m getting better at subterfuge. It wasn’t even that hard to ask what he had planned for his Christmas Day sermon, as if I still believed he gave a shit about it.

It wasn’t hard because I still love him. Even knowing what he is.

Evennotknowing what he is. Because I don’t. I don’t know where the father ends and the mask begins. There had to be truth somewhere in the man who slept in a hospital chair for two nights in a row when I had my appendix out. There had to be truth in the way he cried at my baptism, in the passionate way he talked about God’s grace.

It couldn’t all have been a lie.

But I don’t know which parts were real.

I’m not sure when I’ll confront him—or if I ever can. I’ll have to talk to Damian first, to understand what I’m allowed to say. The complexities of The Four Hundred are still a mystery to me. I don’t want to put anyone in danger—not even the man who’s deceived me my entire life.

But Damian has been unreachable. Three weeks of silence. Hunter explained there are ceremonies, meetings with high-ranking members, and endless administrative duties that come with the transition of power.

He’s placating me, I think.

This is Damian. My Damian. The man who for weeks never let me out of his sight for more than an hour.