chapter forty eight

Camila's POV

"You pushed me, didn't you?" I asked for the hundredth time, that old fear surfacing again like rot.

"No!" His voice broke. "God, no, Camila. I swear to you, I didn't. I've made a thousand mistakes, but not that. I was the one who carried you to the infirmary. I was the one who begged them to save you—"

"Because you needed me alive," I snapped. "Not because you loved me."

Silence.

Then: "I love you now," he whispered.

It broke something in me.

Because I knew it was true.

And it wasn't enough.

That night, while he sat in his study, guilt and silence weighing down his spine, I made my next move.

I wrote one name at the top of the parchment: Thorne.

The real architect. The man behind the council's dirtiest operations.

The man who might know why my power mattered so much.