The rain was falling as if the sky, at last, was also ready to let it all go. Anne walked barefoot along the path of wet stones in the old Vasiliev garden, that place that had once been her prison... and that now burned behind her.
The mansion was in ruins, not from literal fire, but from the collapse of all the secrets that held it. Viktoria had fallen. Lucian's wife had surrendered to the weight of her hatred. Zane had walked away with his heart on the brink of a new destiny.
And Lucian...
Lucian watched her from a distance, drenched by the same storm, with the eyes of the man who finally understood that to love was not to possess.
But this was not his moment.
It was Ana's.
She advanced to the center of the garden, where years ago she was not allowed to walk, where flowers were only for rich eyes. And there, in the rain, her chest burning, Ana closed her eyes.
She remembered everything.
The cries of her childhood.
The promises of freedom with Zane.
Her mother's voice between letters.
Lucian's hands, sometimes salvation, sometimes chain.
Viktoria's cruelty.
Her father's abandonment.
And her own reflection, for so long, distorted in the glass of pain.
She took a deep breath. And with a slow gesture, she dropped to the floor the pearl necklace Lucian had given her. It was not a symbol of love. It was a shackle.
-I am no longer yours," she whispered.
The words were not for anyone. They were for her. For that little girl who was still crying in a corner of her soul, begging to be heard.
The thunder rumbled.
And Ana looked up.
She was no longer afraid.
Not Lucian.
Not the past.
Not the emptiness.
She was alone.
And she was free at last.
Lucian approached, not daring to touch her.
-Ana...
She looked at him with a mixture of compassion and firmness.
-I loved you," she said. Even when I shouldn't have. Even when it hurt. But today... I choose me.
Lucian looked down, as if those words were the final judgment his soul needed.
And then Ana turned away. She walked toward the exit, each step leaving behind a story written in blood and sighs.
Fire does not always destroy.
Sometimes it purifies.
And in that garden where it had all begun, Ana burned each of her chains.
Not to forget.
But to rebuild herself.