The transition back to reality felt like being slammed against a wall. Kira let out a sharp cry that tore through the quiet living room of the cottage. Her hand flew back as if she had touched a live wire, breaking the contact with Maya.

The force of the sudden movement sent her stumbling backward until her legs gave out, and she fell hard onto the floor, landing on her butt.

She sat there, her breath coming in shallow gasps, staring up at Maya in stunned disbelief. The world around her felt fuzzy and distant, but the images inside her head were crystal clear. Tears had already soaked her cheeks, warm and salty, but she didn’t even feel them.

Her heart pounded against her ribs like a drum, echoing the horror of what she had just seen. The memories weren’t just flashes; they were a floodgate that had finally burst open. Her brain had suppressed them for years, burying the trauma under layers of horrifying nightmare. But now, she knew they were all real.

Rolf.

He hadn’t just been a cold father. He had been her executioner. As she sat on the floor, more memories began to claw their way to the surface, uninvited and terrifying.

She recalled a night when she was even younger, waking up to the sensation of thick, heavy fingers tightening around her throat in the dark. She remembered the face of the man now. Her father’s face had been twisted with hate.

She recalled the day she had almost fallen from the first-floor balcony, the world had spun, and she had thought she tripped, but now she remembered the heartless shove against her shoulder blades.

And in every single one of those moments, there was a woman who arrived just in time. Lydia.

The woman she had spent her life viewing as her tormentor had actually been her saviour. It confused her. Was it possible it had all been a distraction? A way to keep Rolf from finishing what he started? Why had Lydia saved her from her father more than once?

Kira clutched her chest, her fingers digging into her shirt as if she could physically hold her heart inside. "Oh, goddess," she muttered, her voice small and broken. "He has been trying to kill me all this while. My own father..."

The "why" of it felt like a black hole. She thought back to the mall, to the strange woman who had looked at her with such pure, unadulterated horror. "Claire," the woman had gasped.

Her mother’s name was Claire.

If I look so much like my mother, and he hated me enough to want to erase me... Did he truly love my mother like he claimed? Why do I torment him? Who was that woman at the mall? And what did she know?

The questions raced through her mind like wildfire, but she had no answer to any of them. All she could do was weep for the little girl who had spent years trying to earn the love of a man who only wanted her in a grave.

The sound of footsteps approaching made her flinch.

Flora re-entered the living room, carrying a glass of water in her hand. The moment her eyes landed on the scene, her face went a ghostly shade of white. She saw Kira crumpled on the floor, her face twisted with agony and wet with tears.

"Your Highness!" Flora cried out, the glass slipping from her fingers. It hit the rug with a dull thud, water splashing everywhere.

Flora hurried over, her eyes darting frantically between Maya—who stood as still as a statue—and the broken woman on the floor. She knelt beside Kira, her hands hovering as if afraid she might break her.

"My queen? Child, what is it? What happened?"

Kira couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t explain that the little girl standing there had just handed her a key to a house of horrors. She reached out, grasping Flora’s arm with a desperate, shaking hand.

"Take me back," Kira choked out, her voice barely audible. "Please, Flora. Just take me back to the beach house. I can’t... I can’t be here."

Flora didn’t ask questions. She saw the raw trauma in Kira’s eyes and knew that the shopping trip and the eventful afternoon were over.

"Of course. Of course, dear. Stay right here." She scrambled up, her keys jingling loudly as she snatched them from the counter, her movements hurried and anxious.

The drive back to the beach house passed in a blur. Kira sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the sea and the passing trees, but she saw none of it. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the truck window, her mind swirling like a whirlpool. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the match falling to the kerosene-soaked floor.

At the beach house, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of tension.

Derek was pacing the living room, hand stuck casually in his trouser pockets. He had checked his watch every thirty seconds for the last hour. He told himself it was because Kira knew no one around Snow Crest. He wasn’t worried at all, but his eyes kept drifting to the driveway.

Every time he heard a distant engine, he shifted toward the window, his jaw tight.

When the he finally spotted Alistar’s truck coming down the driveway, Derek’s body relaxed for a split second before his pride took over. He couldn’t let her see him like this—anxious, waiting, watching.

He moved quickly, dropping onto the leather sofa, grabbed a random magazine from the coffee table and snapped it open to a middle page, staring intensely at an article about garden irrigation he wasn’t actually reading.

The front door creaked open. Derek kept his eyes fixed on the page, waiting for the inevitable. He expected the front door to bang against the wall. He expected the sound of her humming, or her "chirping" about some ridiculous shoes she’d bought, or her teasing him about how much he missed her.

"I’m back," a voice said.

Derek froze. It wasn’t the bright, bubbly tone he was used to. It was flat. Hollow.

He looked up, ready to ask why they were out for so long, but the words died in his throat. Kira didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair a mess, and her shoulders were hunched as though she were carrying the weight of the entire world.

"Good afternoon, Derek," she said as she passed.

She didn’t stop to tell him about her day or joked about anything. She simply walked past him, her feet heavy on the stairs as she disappeared into the upper floor.

Flora followed a few steps behind clutching different sizes of shopping bags. She paused to give the King a slight, apologetic bow. Her face was etched with worry, and she looked as though she had aged ten years in a single afternoon.

Derek sat in the deafening silence, the magazine still clutched in his hands. Confusion warred with a sudden, sharp pang of concern in his chest.

What the hell happened?

A few minutes later, Flora came back down the stairs alone. Derek stood up at once, his face carefully blank, the magazine forgotten on the sofa.

"Flora," he barked, his voice sounding more aggressive than he intended because of his own confusion. "What is going on? Why is she in that state?"

Flora let out a long, weary sigh and shrugged her shoulders. She looked toward the stairs and then back at her King.

"I don’t know the whole of it, Your Grace," she said softly. "But it started in the neighbourhood. A young woman—a mother—died during childbirth today. It was a terrible, bloody thing."

Derek’s brow furrowed.

"She was fine at first," Flora continued, "but then she just... broke. She started talking about her own mother. It seems the tragedy triggered something deep inside her. Something she’s been carrying for a very long time."

Derek turned and looked toward the stairs.

"She’s in bed now," Flora added. "She didn’t want any lunch. She just wanted to be left alone."

Derek said nothing. He simply stared after Flora as she bowed and moved quietly toward the kitchen. Inside his chest, something shifted, cold and sharp. He did not like the heavy silence Kira had brought back with her. He did not like it at all.