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My mother closed her book with a snap and set it aside. She rose from her chair with fluid grace, every movement calculated and controlled, and crossed the room until she stood inches from me. I didn’t step back. I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.

“Tell me,” she said, her voice dangerously soft. “What exactly do you think you know about right and wrong? About cruelty? You’ve lived twenty-nine years in the comfort I provided, protected by my power, educated by my coven, groomed to be my heir. And now you think you can lecture me?”

“I think I can tell you that Logan Richards doesn’t deserve this.” I met her eyes, refusing to flinch. “He was having a bad day when he arrived. He was overwhelmed, scared, grieving his human life. He made a mistake. One mistake. And you’ve tortured him for a year.”

“He disrespected me.” The temperature in the room dropped. “I offered him blood, shelter, and guidance when his maker abandoned him. He rejected my help in front of Mack Kingston and treated me as though my authority meant nothing.”

“Because he was terrified!” The words burst out of me, hot and desperate. “He’d been turned three days before. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. He didn’t know our customs, our rules, our expectations. He lashed out because he was drowning, and instead of throwing him a rope, you chained an anchor to his ankle.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed. “You speak of him like you know him.”

“I do know him.” I lifted my chin, defiant. “I know he’s kind. I know he’s brave. I know he spends his nights reading because he has no one to talk to, and his days trying not to draw attention to himself because every eye on him is an eye waiting to laugh. I know he apologizes to furniture when he bumps into it, as if the humiliation has become so internalized that he expects to be punished for simply existing.”

“Sentimental nonsense.” But something flickered in her expression. Something I couldn’t read.

“It’s not nonsense. It’s who he is. Beneath the curse, beneath the clumsiness, beneath everything you’ve done to him. He’s a good man, Mother. A good man who made one mistake on the worst day of his life.”

“Good men don’t insult High Priestesses.” She turned away, walking back to her chair, dismissing me with her body language. “Good men know their place. Show respect. Accept guidance when it’s offered.”

“And good High Priestesses don’t curse people for being human!” The words hung in the air, shocking us both. I’d never spoken to her like this. Never raised my voice, never contradicted her, never challenged her authority in her own home.

She turned slowly, and her face was terrible to behold. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” My heart was hammering, my hands shaking, but I couldn’t stop now. The words kept tumbling out, years of resentment and fear and carefully controlled obedience finally breaking free. “You’ve always been cruel. Always. I’ve watched you destroy people my whole life. The boy who forgot his name. The witch who challenged your leadership. The family who refused to pay your tithe. You crush anyone who displeases you, and you call it justice. But it’s not justice. It’s vanity. It’s pride. It’s the inability to tolerate any slight, any challenge, any reminder that you’re not actually perfect.”

“Carolina.” Her voice was a warning, low and dangerous.

“No.” I stepped toward her, my own magic rising in response to my anger, warm and electric and wild. “I’m not finished. You want to know why I chose him? Why I keep choosing him? Because when I’m with Logan, I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to be careful. I can just be me. I can be the messy, uncertain, flawed person I actually am. And he sees me. He sees me, Mother. Not the heir. Not your daughter. Me.”

“And what exactly do you think you are,” she asked, her voice ice, “without me? Without the coven? Without the power and position I’ve given you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to find out. Because whatever I am without you, it’s better than what I am with you. A puppet. A prop. A perfect, empty shell.”

The silence stretched between us, heavy and charged. I could feel her power building, the air thickening with her anger, her magic pressing against mine like a physical weight. She could crush me. I knew that. She could strip me of my magic, my name, my very existence. She’d done it to others. She could do it to me.

But I wouldn’t back down. Not this time. Not about this.

“You would throw away everything,” she said finally, “for a clumsy, broken vampire who insulted me. Your family. Your coven. Your future. Your power. All of it. Gone.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The question surprised me. She never asked why. She commanded, she demanded, she expected obedience without explanation. But now she was looking at me with something almost like curiosity. Almost like pain.

“Because he makes me feel alive,” I said quietly. “Because when he looks at me, I don’t see the reflection of your expectations. I see myself. And now I like what I see.”

She stared at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she turned away, walking to the window, her back rigid.

“The curse stays,” she said. “I will not be defied. Not by him, and not by you.”

“Then I’ll find another way to break it.” I moved toward the door, my legs steady, my resolve unshakable. “I’ll research every text, consult every witch, explore every loophole. And when I find it, when I free him, you’ll have lost us both. Not because we defied you. But because you chose your pride over your daughter.”

I reached for the door handle.

“Carolina.”

I paused, not turning around.