Margaret’s POV
Age sharpens some senses and dulls others. My hearing was not what it once had been, and my bones reminded me daily that time is an unforgiving companion. But my sight, my true sight, had never failed me.
Not when my husband began lying with silence instead of words, not when my son married for power instead of love, and certainly not now. Hospitals are honest places. They strip people of polish. They reveal who stays when it’s inconvenient, who speaks when they think no one is listening, who lies with their body even when their mouth behaves.
I had been watching, Alexander sat by my bed earlier that day, stiff as a soldier, his jaw locked in the familiar way it always was when he believed restraint equalled strength. Cassandra stood beside him like a statue carved for di
