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Muffin placed one paw on the paper and smeared the ink.

“She approves,” Audrey said.

“She stepped in the ink.”

“Muffin’s approval process is proprietary.”

That night, after Audrey left and Muffin was forcibly removed from the application, I stood by the window and watched the streetlight spill across the brick wall beyond the glass.

“I miss them,” I admitted. “The coven. Even my mother.”

“I know.”

“I hate that I miss her.”

“Missing someone isn’t the same as forgiving them.”

I leaned back against him. Logan wrapped his arms around me, careful with the strength returning to his body and the new fragility in mine.

“You gave up everything for me,” he said.

“No.” I turned in his arms. “I gave up everything she controlled. There’s a difference.”

He kissed my forehead.

Over those first three days of exile, we built a life from forms, borrowed clothes, unreliable magic, and our stubborn refusal to believe that losing one future meant losing them all.

Then the white rose appeared.

Chapter Fourteen

I thought it was over.

I expected to return only for the coven to witness my exile and my mother to dissolve the anchor. After that, I thought the door between us would be closed forever.

I was wrong.

The summons came three days after I’d chosen exile. Not ravens this time. Not silver thread. Just a single white rose left on my pillow while I slept, its petals soft and perfect, its thorns removed.

A white rose. The symbol of truce. Of peace. Of surrender.

My mother had never surrendered to anyone in her entire existence.

“Delia called. The assembly’s changed. Your mother wants to see you,” Mack told me when I showed him the rose at his garage. “Publicly. In front of the whole coven.”

“Why?” I asked, my stomach tight with suspicion. “She already won. She got what she wanted. I’m exiled, powerless, cut off.”

“Maybe she didn’t.” Mack wiped his hands on a rag, his expression serious. “Maybe she thought you’d break. That you’d come crawling back, begging for forgiveness. And when you didn’t...” He shrugged. “Maybe she’s the one who’s cracking.”

I thought about that. About my mother alone in that enormous house, surrounded by servants and acolytes who feared her but didn’t love her. I remembered the wetness in her eyes when I walked out and the rigid set of her shoulders.

She’d been hurt. I’d hurt her. And Jacqueline Fortman didn’t tolerate being hurt.

“Logan doesn’t want me to go,” I said. “He thinks it’s a trap.”

“It probably is,” Mack agreed. “But it’s also an opportunity. If she really is willing to talk, to listen...” He met my eyes. “You could get everything back. Your coven. Your family. Your place.”

“I don’t want everything back,” I said quietly. “I want her to accept him. To accept us. That’s all.”