CHAPTER 140
There's a specific stillness that comes after rage.
It's not peace. It's not even exhaustion. It's like… anesthesia.
Numb. Cold. Clear.
I stood in front of the mirror and didn't flinch at the cracks running across my reflection. I looked like a woman who'd just clawed her way out of hell and was ready to redecorate it. My eyes were sharp, my shoulders tensed.
My Mouthaas set in a line that promised retribution.
They thought I'd crumble. They thought they'd made me small.
Idiots.
I was never small. I was simply dormant.
I dried my hair mechanically. Every drag of the towel over my scalp was methodical like removing evidence. It wasn't about vanity anymore. It was about transformation.
Pipe Wellesley, the unstable roommate with a mysterious past? She was irrelevant. Pipe, the broken little muse in Antonio's bed? Gone.
No. What the world had just done was give birth to something worse. Something untraceable.
Something necessary.
