Savina moved swiftly along the corridor, her bootd striking the stone with crisp, echoing snaps, yet the farther she drew from her mother’s chambers, the more that raw anger lost its grip on her stride.

  Noa’s parting words clung to her like a trailing shadow, impossible to shake.

  Still think we’re fools?

  Her fists clenched tighter, nails pressing crescent marks into her palms. She ached to scoff aloud, to hurl back some cutting reply, to recim control with one perfectly timed, venomous remark that would slice the moment in her favor.

  But she had done none of it.

  She had simply turned and walked away in silence.

  That silence now burrowed deep, gnawing at her with relentless teeth.

  She slipped into a narrow side gallery where sunlight spilled through the high windows in wide, indifferent ribbons of gold, pooling across the cool marble in soft, unfeeling bands. Alone at st, she braced her palms against the stone ledge, letting its chill seep into her skin while her breath came in short, uneven pulls.

  The images crashed together inside her: her mother’s unhurried walk down the long corridor, chin lifted high, every line of her body radiating unshakable composure. The small, calm nod that carried more defiance than any shout. The deliberate refusal to let shame touch her features.

  And beneath it all—the memory she could not bury—the heated sounds that had drifted through his chamber door the night before. Those low, throaty moans of pure pleasure, the rhythmic gasps that built and broke in waves, the unmistakable cadence of a woman lost to sensation. Proof that Camille had given herself over completely. That no matter how proudly she carried herself afterward, she had still been taken, body and breath, in the thick heat of the moment.

  So which truth held?

  Savina swallowed hard, throat tight. She wanted to believe her mother had broken her own rules in that bed—that surrender was weakness, pin and raw. That yielding came only when every other move had been spent.

  That was the world she knew. The one she had spent years armoring herself against, sharp edges outward.

  Yet when she had looked into Camille’s eyes that morning, she had seen no wreckage. No hollow defeat staring back.

  Only something steadier.

  Quieter.

  A deep, private glow that refused to be named.

  Savina smmed her palms against the stone again, harder this time, the impact vibrating up her arms as her jaw locked tight.

  “No,” she whispered fiercely into the empty air. “I won’t be fooled. Not like her.”

  The words left her mouth and fell ft, ringing hollow against the sunlit walls.

  Because the doubt had already settled deep—slow and insidious, curling like smoke through the shadowed corners of her thoughts, refusing to be driven out.