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Her gaze returned to Henry. “For believing it was easy for you to leave.”

The words entered so quietly that my defenses didn’t rise in time.

“After Salvatore died, I needed someone to blame,” she continued. “I couldn’t blame him because he was gone. I couldn’t blame Henry because he was innocent, and blaming Nolan didn’t feel like enough for everything we’d lost. So I blamed you.”

I said nothing. Honesty deserved room even when it hurt.

“I told myself you chose your family over mine. That you gave Henry away and returned to the life you wanted.” Her mouth trembled. “It was easier to believe you didn’t love him enough to stay than to admit you loved him enough to leave.”

I looked at my sleeping son because watching Illyria confess had become unbearable.

“You weren’t entirely wrong,” I said. “I chose my family. I chose Henry.”

“I know that now.”

“Do you?” The question came sharper than I intended, but this moment didn’t deserve gentleness bought with another lie. “You lost your brother, Illyria. I know what Salvatore was to you, and I would never make that grief smaller. But you were allowed to mourn him. You stood beside his grave. People brought food, said his name, and understood why you couldn’t breathe.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“I lost him alone,” I continued. “Then I lost Henry every morning after. I listened to people speak about Salvatore as though I had no right to break. I watched my son from park benches while he called another woman Mom, and I had to be grateful because it meant he was loved. Do you understand what that kind of gratitude does to a person?”

“No,” Illyria whispered. “I don’t think anyone can understand it without living it.”

The absence of an excuse loosened something inside me.

“I stood at my brother’s funeral believing I had suffered the worst loss in the world,” she said. “Then I took Henry home, held him when he cried, and let myself believe loving him gave me the right to hate you. Every time he called me Mom, I told myself I had earned the name because I stayed. I never asked what it cost you to make sure someone could.”

Her hand covered her mouth for a moment. When she lowered it, the composure she had carried upstairs was gone.

“I am so sorry, Madigan. Not for loving him—I can’t apologize for that. But I am sorry I turned your sacrifice into abandonment because it helped me live with what I had been given. I am sorry I let grief make you into a woman my brother never would have loved, when Salvatore died proving you were the woman he loved more than his own life.”

The apology found every place anger had kept alive. I had imagined Illyria possessing my son, his mornings, his trust, and the name I had surrendered. Then I’d hated myself because she was the reason Henry had never known he was missing anything.

“You didn’t take my place,” I said.

Illyria’s face broke. “Madigan⁠—”

“Nolan took it. The Society took it. Every man who decided Henry’s blood mattered more than his childhood took pieces of it.” I looked at the woman who had raised my son. “You kept my place from becoming an empty space inside him.”

She shook her head as tears continued falling. “There should have been room for both of us.”

“There wasn’t. Not then.”

“There can be now.”

The hope in her voice nearly destroyed me. She didn’t know I had come to say goodbye, because if I spoke the truth, she would try to stop me. Maxim would add guards. Rurik would lock me inside another safe house. They would promise that this time power would defeat inevitability.

Salvatore had probably heard the same promises.

“The Society knows about him,” I said. “They marked my husband for death before he was ever handed over. I’m following the same evidence. Asking the same questions.”

Understanding spread slowly across Illyria’s face. “Then stop.”

“If Salvatore had stopped, would they have forgotten what he knew?”

“We can hide you. Maxim can⁠—”

“No.”