I sign the annulment papers in one clean stroke, each loop of my name smooth and certain. The Marell seal glints at the top, cold and final. I don’t look at Dorian. I don’t look at his signature either. I just sign and slide the papers back.
No note. No explanation. Just a name written at the bottom: Ms. Ella Dove.
My mother’s name, the only name I’ve known before I met Dorian.
I leave the envelope on the dining room table, the one where Lady Isolde used to host her afternoon teas and pick apart the lesser wives of nobility with surgical precision. Let her read the name and flinch. Let them all choke on it. I step out of the manor for the last time without a backward glance.
The cemetery is still, hidden behind a weathered chapel where the wind forgets to blow. The marble stones stand like secrets, worn but proud. Only one has fresh flowers—hers. I kneel beside my mother’s grave and lay my palm against the cold stone, like I’m reaching for a hand that’s long gone. I trace her name with shaking fingers, whispering it like a prayer I was too young to say when she left.
“I wish you could see me now,” I murmur. “But maybe it’s better that you can’t.”
My voice cracks. The tears come quietly, not from pain, but from the weight finally slipping off my chest. She never saw the girl who became nothing. She’ll never see the woman fighting to become something again. Maybe she’d be proud. Maybe she’d be angry I let them break me.
I press my forehead to the marble. “They forgot me, Mama. But I didn’t forget you.”
When I rise, the wind pulls at my coat. I feel it then—a car idling at the edge of the cemetery road. Sleek. Black. Windows tinted. I don’t flinch. I don’t acknowledge it.
The cemetery caretaker nods to me as I leave, his expression cautious but not unkind.
I take the long route back to the city, feet aching inside boots that have walked through five years of silence. Every step feels like I’m stripping something away—his last name, their shame, the hollow version of myself I was forced to wear. I pass a bakery and smell cinnamon. I pass a café and hear laughter. It all feels far away, like I’m walking through a world I once auditioned for and never got the part.
At a bookstore window, I stop. There’s a novel displayed with a heroine holding a sword and her chin high. The tagline reads, “She didn’t need saving. She needed remembering.” My throat tightens. I take one last look, then keep walking.
Inside the house I stayed in, the kettle whistles as I boil water for tea I won’t drink. I sit on the edge of the bed, watching the cup steam, hands folded in my lap like I’m waiting for a verdict. The hours pass like a held breath. I don’t check the mirror again. I already know what it will show.
They think I’m hesitating. They think I’m broken. Maybe they’re right.
Outside, the air is sharp with morning. The black car waits at the curb like it never left. No window rolls down. No threat is made. It simply waits.
Did Lady Isolde send someone to spy on me? Unbelievable.
Her laughter follows me like expensive perfume—sweet, cloying, and poisonous if inhaled too deeply.
When I come back to the house, she stands proudly at the top of the stone steps, wrapped in a silk robe that screams inherited wealth, her hand resting on the balcony railing like she’s royalty seeing off a broken servant. Behind her, the staff linger just inside the doorways, pretending not to watch me leave. Pretending they weren’t the same people who looked through me every day I lived here.
She calls after me, her voice sharp and theatrical. “I do hope the next house is more forgiving of mediocrity, darling. Not everyone is cut out for high society.”
I say nothing. My fingers tighten around the handle of my suitcase, its wheels stuttering against the uneven gravel. The path to the gates feels longer than ever before. Or maybe it’s just heavier now—with all the things I won’t say.
“You could’ve had comfort, Ella. You chose embarrassment.” Her voice rings through the still morning air. “I warned Dorian. A stray is still a stray, even in silk.”