The great doors closed on Mama Mariah’s retreating figure, the echo of bootsteps swallowed by the palace corridors.
Mia stayed where she was—tucked in the shadow of a fluted column—until the sound faded.
Only then did her knees give way, and she slid down against the cold stone.
Her breath hitched in shallow bursts.
The tight knot in her chest refused to loosen, even when she pressed the heel of her hand hard against it.
She had held it together through the whole performance—through Sergius’s quiet cruelty, through Maria’s surrender, through Ariya lying there like a shell.
But now the edges of her vision blurred.
She bit her lip to keep the sobs silent, but the tears came anyway, hot and blinding.
They fell onto the marble in dark little splashes, vanishing almost as soon as they
