Chapter 8
The engagement ended the next morning.
Coralie knew before I said it.
She placed the ring on my desk.
No bargaining.
Good.
“Cassian?”
I asked.
She stared at the window.
“What about him?”
“Are you leaving with him?”
“I don’t know.”
Honest again.
Then:
“Would it bother you?”
“Yes.”
She looked surprised.
I laughed without humor.
“Ending an engagement does not erase feeling by breakfast.”
Her eyes filled.
That was ours.
Not politics.
Not structure.
Just loss.
I asked:
“Why didn’t you leave me before kissing him?”
She struggled with that longer than any operational question.
Finally:
“Because I wanted you to become the man I thought you could be.”
I looked at her.
“And Cassian?”
“He made me feel like I wasn’t begging to matter.”
There.
Cassian had always been good at that.
He made discontent feel intelligent.
Resistance feel intimate.
Maybe he believed it himself.
“Did you plan to marry me while seeing him?”
Coralie whispered:
“I kept telling myself I would end it after the wedding.”
That almost made me laugh.
Marriage as deadline for honesty.
Wonderful.
“And the eight people?”
“I thought if you saw others agreed with me, you’d finally listen.”
“You could have brought them into a room openly.”
“You would have seen it as challenge.”
Maybe.
That answer bothered me.
Would I?
Four years earlier, Cassian gathered men privately.
I treated the secrecy as proof of threat.
Probably correctly.
But since then, had everyone learned collective disagreement itself was dangerous?
If so, I had solved rebellion by making honest opposition lonely.
Not healthy.
Coralie watched me thinking.
“See?”
I looked at her.
“Do not mistake being partly right for being justified.”
Her expression fell.
Good.
I continued.
“You showed me something I need to change.”
Then:
“You also cheated on me, deceived me, used my engagement to organize pressure, and humiliated a child to hide it.”
Silence.
“Both are true.”
She nodded.
Then took the ring.
Not because I asked.
“I don’t want you to keep it.”
Fair.
She left Blackthorne—Blackwell—before noon.
Cassian did not go with her.
May you like
Interesting.
Not my concern yet.
