He pressed his forehead to hers. “You were never the transaction, Clarara. You were always the answer.”
When she was gone, he hung the key above the mantel in the library, beside her portrait. Underneath it, he wrote a single line in his careful, steady hand:
She chose me. I never deserved her. But I spent forty-six years trying.
The key hangs there still, for anyone who visits Aldderon Hall to see. A reminder that the greatest gift one person can give another is not love, but the freedom to choose it.
And somewhere in the stars, Clarara Ren—no, Clarara Harrow, Duchess of Aldderon Veil—smiles down at the house that learned to breathe again. The Seven Sisters glitter around her, and she is not alone.
Not ever again.
