Chapter 92

I found her in the garden.

The morning light filtered through the trees in gentle patches, breaking apart over the stone path and scattering gold across the grass. Jenny sat on the edge of the fountain like she had nowhere else to go. She clutched the journal against her chest like it was a weapon and a shield, her knuckles white with pressure. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with violet circles, her cheeks blotchy from crying, and when she looked up at me, there was no hesitation in her glare. No pity, no doubt, only fury. Her whole body radiated it.

I had played this moment out in my head more than once over the last few days, imagining what she might say, how I might defend myself. But nothing I had rehearsed prepared me for the weight in her stare or the way my throat closed as I stepped into the clearing. I wanted to speak, to say anything that might bring us back to something resembling civility, but her expression stopped me in my tracks. She didn’t look like someone betrayed. She looked like someone hunted.

"You really think you're better than me," she said, each word cold and brittle. She rose from the fountain with slow purpose, clutching the journal tightly in both hands. "You wrote it all down. Like I was an experiment. Like I was some insecure, selfish child you had to endure."

"Jenny," I said, stepping forward with care. "Please."

She ignored me and snapped open the journal to a dog-eared page. Her voice rose into something hollow and sharp as she read aloud. "'Jenny makes everything feel like a test. There are right answers and wrong ones, and I always seem to fail her somehow.'" Her mouth curled. "What a beautiful thing to say about someone who gave you a room, a wardrobe, a best friend, a place in society."

I shook my head. "That was never how I saw you."

She flipped to another page. Her voice cracked but didn’t falter. "'Sometimes I wonder if Jenny likes having me around because it makes her feel powerful. That helping me makes her feel like a hero instead of a person.'" She snapped the book closed. "You thought I was fake. Everything I did for you, every ounce of care, and you sat in your bed writing down how manipulative I must be."

"It wasn’t like that," I said, my voice catching. "You don’t understand what I was going through."

"No, I think I understand just fine," she said. "You showed up at my door with nothing, and I opened it. I told everyone to give you a chance. I made room for you in places I didn’t even have space for myself. And now what do I get? Pages of insults and paranoia, because you never trusted me to begin with."

She tossed the journal to the ground between us. The pages splayed across the stones like scattered feathers.

"You came into my life like some stray I was supposed to rescue, and then you just kept taking. You took my friends. You took Adam. And now you’ve taken him."

I took a step back. "Jenny, this isn’t what you think."

"'Richard looks at me like he already knows. Like he sees past everything I try to hide.'" She quoted it from memory this time. No book. Just rage. "You wanted him. You say you didn’t mean to, but it’s all over those pages. Every fantasy, every flutter of guilt, every time you let yourself get close. You wanted him while you were still under his roof. While you were still pretending to be my friend."

"I didn’t know what I felt," I said. "I was confused. I never acted on it."

"That’s a lie. Maybe you didn’t kiss him when we were teenagers, but you wanted to. And eventually, you did. You did everything. And now he’s yours."

Her voice rose until it broke. "He was mine. He was my dad. And now he’s looking at you like he wants to give you everything he never gave me."

My heart ached. I stepped forward again. "He still loves you. You’re his daughter."

"He looks at me like a duty. He looks at you like salvation."

She turned away for a moment, arms crossed. Her breath was ragged. When she turned back around, her face was hard again, but I could see the cracks beneath it. Her lips trembled as she flipped another page.

"'There are days I think Jenny's obsession with control is the only thing keeping her from unraveling completely.'" She scoffed. "That one hurt. That one hurt more than all the rest. Because it might even be true. But that doesn’t give you the right to say it."

I lowered my voice. "I was scared, and I was angry, and I was trying to figure out who I was and where I stood. The journal wasn’t meant to be shared. It wasn’t meant to judge you."

"But it does," she shouted. "Every sentence. Every scribble. You laid me bare and picked me apart and still walked away with everything."

"That’s not how it happened."

She stepped in closer, and her eyes narrowed. "And Adam. Even he looked at you like you hung the moon. And you didn’t even want him. He loved you more than he ever looked at me, and you didn’t care. You don’t care about anyone but yourself."

Her voice cracked and faltered, and for a moment I saw the Jenny I remembered. The one who braided my hair before school dinners and smuggled me snacks during long classes. The girl who had once let me cry in her lap the night I told her about my parents.

"I missed you," I said, barely a whisper.

She blinked hard. Her shoulders shuddered. For a moment I thought she might cry.

Then her face twisted. She bent down, grabbed the journal, and threw it against my chest so hard it stung.

"Take it. Memorize it. Burn it for all I care. But don’t think for a second this is over. I will not let you stand beside him while I disappear."

She turned on her heel. "You think this Kingdom wants a Luna like you? You think they’ll forget what you were before you climbed into his bed?"

Then she disappeared down the hedge path without another word.

The wind rustled through the leaves, filling the silence she left behind. I stood there for a while, breathing shallowly, arms wrapped around the journal. Then I knelt slowly and gathered the pages that had fallen out.

It didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt like evidence of everything I had ever done wrong.

I didn’t hear Richard until he knelt beside me.

"Amelia."

I couldn’t meet his eyes. I sat frozen with the journal in my lap, pages crinkling under my fingertips.

"She read it," I said, my voice hollow.

He nodded once.

"She read all of it. She quoted it back to me. I think she memorized half the pages."

He looked down at the mess in my lap. "It wasn’t meant to be seen. It wasn’t meant to be used against you."

"But it will be."

He reached out and touched my arm gently. "That journal was how you survived. It was your place to think and grieve and process. That doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you human."

I looked at him. "She said she’s going to ruin me."

He didn’t flinch. He reached for the journal, closed it carefully, and set it aside. Then he wrapped his arms around me. I let him pull me close.

"She might try. But she doesn’t get to decide what happens next. You’re not alone. Not in this. Not anymore."

I buried my face against his shoulder and let the tears fall, not loud, not wild, just steady. He didn’t say anything else. He just held me, and for the first time since Jenny had stolen it, I started to believe that maybe I would survive it after all.