Read Chapter 26: Choice and Sacrifice

The horse’s hooves were leaden by the time Cordelia reached the Ashworth gate, and she slid from the saddle before the beast had fully stopped, her boots sinking into the mud of the drive. The house loomed before her, every window dark but for the kitchen’s dull glow, and she stood there a moment, breath ragged, the torn page pressed against her ribs beneath her cloak like a brand.

She did not weep. There was no time for weeping.

Inside, the servants moved in hushed confusion. They had seen Lord Roderick leave with her; they had seen her return alone. Mrs. Hatch, the housekeeper, met her in the hall with a lamp held high, her face a map of questions Cordelia could not answer.

“My lady—where is his lordship?”

Cordelia’s voice came out steady, which surprised her. “He has been detained. I need paper, ink, and sealing wax in my study. And I am not to be disturbed until morning.”

Mrs. Hatch hesitated, then nodded and turned away. Cordelia climbed the stairs, each step an effort, her limbs still heavy from the magical drain at Marlow End. The torn page in her bodice seemed to pulse against her skin, or perhaps that was simply her heart, hammering out its last hours of feeling.

She lit a single candle in the study and spread the page flat on the desk, weighting its curling corners with a brass letter opener and a small porcelain dog that had belonged to her mother. The ink was faded in places, the hand a cramped, obsessive script, but the words were clear enough.

*To break the curse of blood and bond, the caster must give what the heart cannot spare: the knowing of other minds, the feeling of other hearts. What is taken is given. What is felt is lost. And the child of two curses shall live.*

Cordelia read it three times, willing some hidden clause to reveal itself, some loophole buried in the cramped script. But the words did not change. There was no other way. She would cast the spell, and in doing so, she would lose the gift that had defined her, burdened her, and protected her from the poison of false affection her whole life.

She would lose the ability to feel anyone’s heart but her own.

And she would lose the one thing that had made her trust Roderick’s quiet constancy—the blessed absence of enchantment in his presence. He was immune to her magic, yes. But she was not immune to him. She could not feel his emotions, and that had been her safety. Now she would feel nothing, from anyone, ever again.

She would become like him.

Perhaps that was fitting. Perhaps that was the only way they could truly meet—two people who could not feel each other, choosing each other anyway.

The candle guttered. Cordelia dipped the pen, and began to write.

*Roderick—*

She stopped. Crossed it out. Began again.

*My lord,*

*I have found the means to break the curse that weighs upon this house and upon any child I might bear. The cost is my gift, which I have used so sparingly and so carefully that I almost believed it did not define me. I was wrong. It defined everything. It was the wall I built against the world, and now I must tear it down to save you from the man who holds you.*

*Forgive me for not asking your leave. There is no time. Sir Hugh will not keep you long if he believes you useless to him—and he has already proven he believes you useful.*

*When this letter finds you, I will be changed. I will not feel the warmth of your presence as I do now. I will not know, by some unspoken instinct, whether you are troubled or at peace. I will be as you are: a blank page, waiting to be written upon by the words we choose to say, not the feelings we cannot hide.*

*I am told I will not feel love. But I have learned, these past weeks, that love is not a feeling I have ever been able to trust. It is a choice. And I choose you.*

*Do not come after me. Release will be negotiated by my solicitor. I will see you when it is done.*

*Yours, in whatever I become,*

*Cordelia*

She sanded the page, folded it, and reached for the wax. The seal of House Ashworth pressed into the warm red pool—a swan, wings spread, a small star above its head. Her hand trembled, and she let it. There was no one to see.

Dawn came gray and cold. Cordelia had not slept. She had dressed in her plainest gown, a charcoal wool with no ornament, and she had wound her hair tightly at the nape of her neck. The page was tucked into her sleeve. The letter sat on the desk, sealed and addressed.

She would go to Old Meg first. Meg would know how to cast the spell properly—whether it required ritual, timing, words spoken aloud. Cordelia had only the page, and the fear that she might do it wrong and lose her gift for nothing.

She was halfway down the stairs when a commotion at the back door stopped her. Voices, urgent and low. She recognized Mrs. Hatch’s sharp tone and a younger, breathless one—one of the stable boys.

Cordelia’s hand tightened on the banister. She altered course, moving through the cold corridor to the kitchen, where the servants clustered around a lad in a muddy coat, his cheeks flushed from riding.

“—told me to say it plain, if she asked,” the boy was saying. “His lordship left before dawn, not taken, not forced. He went on his own.”

The kitchen went silent as Cordelia stepped through the doorway. Mrs. Hatch’s face drained of color. The boy’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean, ‘left on his own’?” Cordelia’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade.

The boy swallowed. “He came back to the house last night, my lady, after you left. I saw him ride in—” He paused, confusion flickering across his face. “Begging your pardon, I thought you were together, but he was alone, and he looked like he’d been through a hedge backwards. He went straight to the library, and I heard him moving things, packing, is my guess.”

Cordelia’s chest constricted. Roderick had escaped. Roderick had returned to the house—while she had been here, writing her farewell—and he had not come to her. He had not called for her. He had packed and left.

“Did he say where he was going?” she asked.

The boy shook his head. “He didn’t speak to me, my lady. But he left a message with the night groom, for you. Said I was to deliver it myself, no one else.”

Cordelia extended her hand, palm up, steady as stone. The boy fumbled in his coat and produced a folded scrap of paper, creased and dirty at the edges.

She unfolded it. Roderick’s hand was hasty, slanting, barely legible.

*Meg’s words—the servant who was changed. It was Amelia. She is not dead. A rumor, a sighting on the coast. I must find her before Marlowe does. Do not wait for me. Do not trade what you are for what I am. I would rather rot in his dungeon than owe my freedom to your sacrifice. Stay safe. I will return, or I will not. Either way, you must not pay that price for me.*

Cordelia read it three times.

The first time, she felt her own heart crack—not the subtle echo of another’s feeling, but her own, sharp and unmistakable. He had chosen to leave her. He had chosen to chase a ghost, a rumor, a dead woman who was apparently not dead, rather than stay and face the cost of their survival together.

The second time, she felt the cold clarity of logic settle over the hurt. Amelia—the woman Sir Hugh had claimed to love, the woman whose death had been a lie, the servant who had stolen the grimoire and been “changed into something entirely other.” It was not a random thread. It was the knot at the center of everything. Roderick was right to chase it.

The third time she read it, she noticed what he had not written. No apology. No promise. No declaration. He had written her a command: *Do not trade what you are.*

And she had written him a longer letter, a braver one, an honest one—and he would never read it, unless he came back to find it on her desk, waiting.

She folded his note carefully, deliberately, and tucked it into the same sleeve as the torn page of the grimoire.

“He left alone?” she asked. “No provisions, no escort?”

“Took a fresh horse and a satchel,” the boy said. “Looked like he knew where he was going.”

Mrs. Hatch stepped forward, her hand hovering near Cordelia’s elbow but not touching. “My lady, what would you have us do?”

What would she have them do? She had been ready to walk into the fire for him—to give up the last thing that made her uniquely herself, the gift that had been both shield and curse. She had been ready to become a hollow version of herself, all feeling burned away, if it meant he could walk free.

And he had already freed himself.

He would not have thrown away the chance. He would have weighed it, coldly, like a debt. He would have looked at the spell on the torn page and asked himself: *What is she truly giving up?* And he would have decided the answer was too high.

The boy coughed. The kitchen waited. The kettle hissed low on the fire.

“We do nothing,” Cordelia said at last, and her voice surprised her with its steadiness. “His lordship has made his choice. I will make mine.”

She turned and walked back through the corridor, up the stairs, past the study where the sealed letter still lay on the desk, and into the cold morning light of her bedroom. She locked the door. She sat on the edge of her bed, the page and the note both pressed against her heart, and let herself feel grief—her own, unbidden, pure.

No magic to amplify it. No borrowed anguish. Just her own.

When the tears came, they were hers alone. And in that strange, aching silence, Cordelia Ashworth realized she had never once in her life cried without also feeling the world’s emotions pressing in around her. This was new. This was loneliness.

But it was also—she thought, wiping her face with the back of her hand—honest.

She stood. She unlocked the door. She went to the study, took back her letter to Roderick, and reread it. *I choose you.*

She struck the final line with a single stroke of her pen.

Then she folded the letter once more, not sealing it, and placed it in the drawer of her desk. She would find Roderick herself. She would find Amelia. And she would do it without making a bargain that cost her everything before she had even had the chance to know what she was giving up.