Until now, I hadn’t allowed myself to accept she might truly be gone. For my family’s sake, I had always played along with the pretense that she was alive somewhere and would eventually come home. But sitting here, in the royal palace, surrounded by Descended—the very situation my mother had spent a lifetime trying to keep me away from—felt like the turning of a page. A goodbye. Life after Auralie Bellator. Five minutes, I conceded. You get five minutes to feel sorry for yourself. Then you get up, and you get back to work. I tilted my head back against the cold stone wall and closed my eyes.
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