She stood and walked toward him with deliberate grace, each step confident yet restrained. There was hesitation in her movement, a lingering expectation of rejection, of being stopped as she had been before. But no resistance came.
She reached him and gently took his face in her hands.
"This face has never lost its beauty," she said with a soft smile, her eyes unwavering. "But my freedom matters far more to me."
Nwadiebube said nothing. He simply kept his gaze on her, steady and unblinking, as though he were trying to strip away every layer she had carefully built around herself.
"So all this," he said at last, his voice calm but edged with something sharper beneath, "was for your freedom."
"Yes," Mei replied without hesitation.
He did not ask why she believed her freedom lay in his hands. There was no need. From what little he knew of the being who stood above her, the master she served.
