_Anya’s POV_
The entire evening felt like something from a dream.
After we returned from town, I stayed distracted by the strange woman from the jewelry shop. No matter how much I tried to push her words away, they kept returning to me.
“You are blinded by trust and cannot see the truth.”
The sentence echoed again and again inside my head.
I stood near the bedroom window for a long time, staring outside at the darkening sky. The clouds were painted orange and pink by the setting sun and the wind moved softly through the trees around the mansion.
Maya stirred quietly inside me. Stop thinking about that woman.
“I am trying.”
She was strange.
“Yes.”
And frightening.
I wrapped my arms around myself slowly. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”
Maya hesitated. I do not know.
Th
