Mina’s gaze drifted across the room to Lucien. He had lifted his head from his hands, eyes wide, the raw shock and grief slowly mingling with something else.

Hope.

A fragile, almost foolish hope that Seraphine might still exist, that one day he could see her again.

Mina felt a stab of guilt twist in her chest. Was this mercy she was giving him, or a cruel lie wrapped in possibility? What if he had to wait years, decades even, for a version of Seraphine that might never come? What if she had been reborn into a body he could not recognize, could not love? The questions crowded her mind, relentless and sharp, leaving her hollow.

She wanted to warn him, to protect him from the heartbreak she could already feel pressing in from the edges. But the words caught in her throat. How could she speak truth without shattering the only spark keeping him tethered to hope?

However, she knew what kind of man Lucien was. He would wait, no matter how long, no matter how much it destroyed him. And that was too painful for her to watch. Seraphine did not deserve such devotion. She had abandoned him without warning, and Mina, dragged here like an unwilling sacrifice, could not forgive her for that. It was not fair. Not for Lucien, and not for her. She would not forgive her.

“Do not wait for her,” she said at last, her voice smaller and more bitter than she intended. She pushed herself up from the bed’s edge and took a step toward him, already knowing what he would say. “You must understand what you are asking. You are promising your life to a shadow. That is neither noble nor merciful. That is a slow death.”

Lucien’s head lifted. His eyes met hers with that impossible steadiness, raw and awful. “If it is a slow death,” he said, “then let it be mine. I will burn slowly if it brings her back.”

His words were devotion and grief twisted together, and something inside her twisted with them. She wanted to strike him, to shake him awake from his blind hope, yet in the same breath she wanted to gather him into her arms and shield him from the pain.

That feeling was not hers, and she knew it. It was Seraphine’s longing, Seraphine’s love for this man, still clinging to her body like a haunting ghost. Mina’s own heart recoiled even as it shuddered, and anger burned hotter for the confusion Seraphine had left behind. She hated Seraphine for abandoning him, for dragging Mina into this cruel tangle, and she hated herself for feeling even a flicker of that love.

“You do not get it,” she snapped, sharper than she felt was fair. “What if she is a baby? What then? Do you want to wait decades and then find she is not the woman you loved? What if she grows up differently? What if she never remembers? Would you still call that a life worth living?” Her voice cracked on the last words. The tears she had been holding back pricked at the edges of her lids.

Lucien swallowed. For a moment his defiance buckled and something else showed. Uncertainty. The thin thread of a man who had been given a choice and could not bear to make the wrong one. “I would rather die waiting than live and forget her,” he said hoarsely.

Mina felt sick. The words settled inside her like a stone, heavy and unyielding. She pictured her girlfriend back home at the small kitchen table, their photos scattered like fragile proof of a life that might already feel distant, a cup of tea growing cold between trembling hands. The image made her stomach turn. Would her love wait? Would she spend her days hollowed out by worry and false hope? Mina could not bear to think so.

“You are romantic, stubborn and utterly foolish,” she said, her voice edged with anger that barely covered the ache beneath. Half of the rebuke was meant for Lucien, and half for the woman she had abandoned, as if scolding someone who would never hear her. “You would make a saint look rash.”

He let out a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. “Call me what you will,” he replied. “But I know my heart. I know what I feel. If Seraphine is somewhere in this world, then I will not be the man who turns away because it is hard.”

Isolde rose slowly, her posture finally breaking as if she had carried a weight too long. Her cheeks were still salt-streaked and pale. She moved toward Lucien and placed a hand on his shoulder, the touch both an offer and a benediction. “If you wait,” she said softly, “we will wait with you. We owe her that much.”

Edmund watched them both with a look Mina could not read. He held the notebook against his chest as though it were a relic. The old steadiness in his face was back just enough to hide the rawness. “Hope is dangerous when it is the only thing you have left,” he said. “But it is not for me to tell a man how to grieve.”

Mina stared at him. The room seemed to tilt. She had thought that if Seraphine’s soul still drew breath in this world, then the discovery would be worth celebrating. Instead the knowledge had only multiplied the suffering. To know Seraphine lived somewhere made every loss sharper, because it turned final death into a thing suspended somewhere on a thread.

Guilt crawled through Mina the way cold water crawls up the legs of a drowning person. If hope was what they needed, then she would play along.

“What do you want?” she asked Lucien, the question raw. “Do you want me to promise to help you search? Do you want me to promise to leave you alone? Tell me exactly what you want so I can stop guessing.”

He looked at her for a long time. The room held its breath. Finally he answered, quiet and brittle. “I want nothing from you that cannot be given freely. I ask only that you not stand in the way if I try to find her. If you can help, then help. If you cannot, then at least do not make lies for me to live on.”

Mina swallowed. Help him find Seraphine. Aid the man whose life had been ruptured by the woman who had taken hers. The thought of being complicit in his suffering felt grotesque. Yet to refuse was to steal the only small chance of reunion he had.

“I will help,” she whispered. The words were small, reckless and honest. They were the kind of promise made in the damp after a storm, when everything is slick with truth and fear. However, maybe, just maybe, by helping Lucien was her way of finding peace as well. Just in case she might never return. Maybe only then her own grief would subside.

Lucien’s face cracked as if under a hammer. Relief shone faintly in his eyes, but it was tempered by the knowledge that nothing had truly been solved. He rose, unsteady, and crossed the short distance to the bed. He did not reach for her to touch. He simply looked at her, then at the notebook Edmund still held.

Edmund opened the notebook for a brief look, as if needing to confirm one last trace of the Seraphine he knew. Then he closed it with care, the leather soft beneath his fingers, and tucked it under his arm. His eyes lingered on Mina, thoughtful.

“Perhaps,” he began, voice low and deliberate, “the notebook itself is not enough. There may be something… within you, or connected to you, that resonates with the magic she used. You may be the thread that leads us to her soul.”

Mina stiffened, her heart pounding. That same sickening twist hit her stomach again, only this time the pressure bit deeper, sharpened by the fear and stress closing in on her. “Me? How?”

Edmund glanced at Lucien, then back to her. “This is only a theory. So please be honest with me. And to yourself. Do you feel anything…strange? Like, do you feel anything unusual in this body?”

Mina closed her eyes, a shiver running down her spine as memories surfaced unbidden. The carriage—the cold dread that had gripped her chest, the way her head throbbed painfully before she even understood why. Relief had followed when Isolde had appeared alive, and her body had sagged with it long before her mind caught up. Even now, thinking of Lucien, she felt a pull she did not understand, an instinctive draw she wanted to deny. Her muscles tensed, her pulse quickened, and a tremor ran through her hands.

“Yes,” she whispered, her voice small and uneven. “Sometimes… sometimes I feel like I’m her. Not completely, but pieces of her emotions, reactions, memories, even how this body moves, slip into me. I feel them before I know why.” She swallowed, heat rising to her cheeks. “It terrifies me,” she admitted, voice barely audible.

Edmund’s gaze darkened, his voice lower, almost wary of what he was about to say. “I must warn you, what I am about to suggest is only a theory, but it is the most logical one given the ritual’s nature. The spell was forbidden for a reason. Its results were unpredictable, even among magic scholars. It is possible… that the soul transfer did not succeed as intended. That instead, parts of her soul remain bound to yours. If that is true, over time, you could begin to… become her. Her memories, her instincts, even her emotions might slowly take hold of you.”

Mina froze, her breath catching in her throat. Fear wrapped around her chest, sharp and constricting. “Become her?” she whispered, voice barely audible.

Edmund nodded solemnly. “Yes. You would not lose yourself all at once, but the lines between who you are and who she is may blur. You might wake up one day, and the person looking back in the mirror could feel more like her than you. I repeat, this is just a theory. The spell Seraphine attempted… it was forbidden for a reason. Unstable. Every recorded attempt before hers failed. And those who tried… they paid dearly.”

Mina swallowed hard, bracing herself for whatever truth waited. “Paid… how?”

“Bodies turned hollow. Minds shattered. Some became vessels for things that were not human. Others returned… wrong. That is why the spell was erased from archives. Only our family line retains fragments, because only those with dark magic can even attempt it.” He glanced at Lucien, then back at Mina. “Dark magic is a du Fane secret. Everything that has been said, and everything I say now, stays between us.”

Mina’s chest constricted, a frantic pulse of hope surging through her. “Then… does that mean I can use magic? There has to be a spell, anything, to bring me home! Or maybe… maybe I could reverse the ritual Seraphine performed!” Her voice trembled and pitched higher with each word. She clenched at her skirts, her body leaning forward as if sheer will could drag a path home into being.

Edmund’s gaze softened, almost with pity, but his voice remained steady, unshaken. “To attempt to reverse it is to step into the unknown. Even if a way existed, and I am not saying it does, the consequences could be far worse than you imagine. It might… not result in something you wish.”

Mina’s hope wavered, clawing at her throat like a living thing. “No… no, there has to be a way,” she whispered, urgency breaking into panic. “I can’t stay here. I won’t. I–”

She gasped for air, but nothing filled her lungs. Each breath came shallow and frantic, scraping at her throat. Instinct dragged her to her feet, as if standing might force her lungs to work. The moment she straightened, the room lurched around her, edges blurring, her ears ringing as though muffled by thick wool.

Words stuck somewhere between her ribs and refused to move. Her hands went numb. Her knees buckled, and she caught the edge of the mattress before sinking down with all her weight, strength draining all at once.

The fear hit sharp and cold. Powerless. Trapped. Too small against a truth she could not fight.

A shadow shifted beside her and someone stepped forward, but Mina flinched and lifted her hand fast, fingers trembling. A clear command to stop. She did not want any help. She didn’t want to be fully dependent on others and appear like some weak girl. The world still spun, but she shut her eyes and forced a breath in.

Then another. Slow, ragged and stubborn.

Her pulse still raced, but she fought for control one heartbeat at a time, grounding herself with her palm pressed firm against her sternum. The terror clung to her, raw and biting. Still she held her ground, refusing to let it take her.

When she finally lowered her hand, her breathing had steadied enough for her voice to return.

“I’m trapped,” she whispered, voice raw and hollow in defeat, as if saying it aloud made it more real.

The room held its breath with her, every second stretching taut with unspoken dread. She could feel it, the impossibility of her situation, the weight of a world that had turned against her before she even had a chance to fight.

And then Edmund’s voice cut through the tension, low and resigned. “I am sorry.”