Dawn came like a muffled sigh. The light filtered through the lace curtains seemed more gray than golden, as if even the sun hesitated to touch that day.
Ana woke up before everyone else. The silence of the mansion was a marble tomb. She walked barefoot through the corridors, feeling the cold of the floor seep through her skin. Her night gown billowed slightly with each step. She seemed like an apparition within a world she no longer knew if it was hers.
In her chest, memories swirled like a storm:
The laughter with Zane in the back field at school.
Her mother's voice, tired but tender, lulling her on distant nights.
The last time she saw her brothers, asleep, innocent, not knowing she would disappear at dawn.
And then... Lucian.
Lucian and his promises.
Lucian and his power.
Lucian and his chains disguised as caresses.
She stopped in front of the large mirror in the main hall. The woman looking back at her was not the girl who dreamed of freedom. Nor was she the broken maid who had arrived months before. She was someone else: someone who had lost and survived. Someone with wounds, but also with a strength she didn't know she had.
That morning, someone knocked on the front door. Zane.
His presence was like an echo of the past that had yet to die.
His eyes were bloodshot, his voice firm but broken.
-Ana..." he said. "Come with me. I can't promise you a future, but I can promise it will be yours.
She looked at him for a long time. She had loved Zane. His way of making her feel free, alive, dreamy. But she was no longer that Anne. The world had changed her. It had molded her with fire.
-Zane," she whispered painfully, "you are part of what I was. Part of the most beautiful thing I've ever lived. But I can't go back there anymore. Not because I don't want to... but because I don't belong there anymore.
Zane lowered his head. He didn't hold her back. He didn't blame her. He just looked at her sadly and nodded, as if finally accepting that love knew how to say goodbye too.
Hours later, Lucian appeared in the doorway of the living room. His look was confused, as if he had felt something crumble without knowing what.
-Did he come? -he asked.
-Yes," Anne answered, without looking at him.
-And you'll let him go?
Ana turned to him, her eyes shining.
-I let him go a long time ago. But today... today I let myself go.
Lucian said nothing. He approached slowly, but Ana took a step back.
-This is not the end," he murmured.
-No. This is goodbye," she said in a trembling but firm voice. The last goodbye to who I was. Because if I have any hope of ever being free again... I have to let go of everything, even what I loved most.
And as the clock struck noon, Ana retreated to her room. She didn't run away. She didn't cry. She just closed the door behind her and, for the first time, chose her silence. Her moment. Her own voice.
The past could not be changed.
But at last, she had decided not to live in it any longer.