Chapter 52
**Evangeline's POV**
My tiny apartment felt like a prison cell. The walls pressed in on me from all sides, making it hard to breathe. I'd been pacing the same three steps back and forth for hours, my bare feet wearing a path in the old carpet.
The council meeting felt like it happened years ago instead of just this morning. Everything had changed so fast. One moment I thought I was going to be expelled, thrown out with nothing. The next, Ronan was standing up for me like some kind of hero.
Then he'd crushed me all over again.
"Don't read anything into it."
The words played on repeat in my head, each time cutting deeper than the last. I pressed my hands against my ears, trying to make them stop, but they were burned into my memory now.
"I would have done the same for any p
