Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
I didn’t know if I could live in a space like that, covered in stuff that I didn’t enjoy.
This is crazy and sad.
I took one last look at the painting of Sol sleeping against the dragon, safe and treasured in his possessive embrace.
And I understood.
These three women had spent their entire lives trying to become worthy of being held like that.
By decorating their world in his dreams.
By memorizing his favorite words.
By erasing every piece of themselves that didn't reflect him back.
Even down to pretending to love a story about a woman claimed by a dragon-king who saw her as his equal.
The irony was devastating.
And now I was here, searching their rooms for evidence that one of them betrayed him. The woman he'd already chosen. The one he saw clearly enough that he didn't need her to perform.
Guilt twisted in my stomach. Not because I doubted the mission—if one of them was a spy, she had to be found. But because I understood, suddenly and completely, why she might have done it.
When you've spent your whole life being invisible to the man you loved, sometimes even bad attention felt like being seen.
If it is only one spy out of the three women, it is the one that feels the most ignored.
I considered the three women.
Something is off.
I’d been so sure Hina was the spy due to that strange look on the other island. However, standing in this meticulously curated living room filled with scenes from a book none of them even liked. . .I was seeing a different pattern.
I’m so glad I came to see their living space. There’s a clear hierarchy here that I didn’t know existed, and that’s important.
I looked at Hiro. “Hina is the youngest, but then who is the oldest?”
“Yuki.”
“Interesting.” I put my view back on the painting.
Three bedrooms arranged by choice or more by age—Yuki first, Mami in the center, Hina protected at the end. Three childhood roles etched into adulthood. Three women living inside a performance space built to reflect Kenji back at himself.
And in the center of it all—Mami’s paintings.
Hmmm.
God, those paintings were impeccable and should have won her awards. So much devotion in every brushstroke and tenderness in every detail. This was a woman pouring herself into images of stories she called “juvenile.”
Some people didn’t commit betrayal because they hated someone. They did it because they were unseen.
And middle children were experts at being unseen.
Yuki was the oldest—trusted, responsible, the one who probably held everything together. Hina was the youngest—protected, indulged, and probably the emotional pulse everyone responded to.
But Mami?
The middle?
The one whose needs disappeared in the space between those two poles?
She blended in.
Soft.
Sweet.
Overlooked.
Still here, after years of devotion that rarely earned more than a gentle compliment.
If it is only one spy. . .it would be the one used to being invisible.
The one who learned to adapt so well she became part of the furniture.
The one with the quiet talent.
The one who lived behind her own paintings like a ghost.
My suspicion of Hina had been instinct.
But this—this was motive.
Mami made the most sense.
The overlooked always did.
Plus, I knew this pattern.
I'd watched my mother live it for years.
She'd pretend to enjoy the most boring court footage imaginable—hours of procedural testimony, legal arguments, dry case analysis—because my father loved it. Would sit beside him on the couch, nodding at appropriate moments, asking questions she didn't care about, smiling so wide one could see all her teeth.
Performing interest like it was a second job.
My mother loved romance novels. The trashier, the better. Dukes, rakes, and women who talked back.
But she only read my father’s favorite sci-fi books. The hard, technical ones with more equations than emotions.
Because my father didn't respect romance. Said it made women weak. Made them stupid. Made them believe in fantasies that would ruin them.
So she read what he read.
Watched what he watched.
Became a mirror of his interests until I couldn't remember what she actually liked anymore.
And even now—even with him in prison, even with her free to be whoever the hell she wanted—she still wouldn't touch a romance novel.
Every Christmas, I buy her the latest romance hardcover anyway. Wrap it in pretty paper. Write the same message inside the front cover: Mommy, be you. Live your life. Read this. Learn something cool in here. Look at the possibilities of love.
She'd smile.
Thank me.
Set it on a shelf.
I doubted she ever read them.
Because even after the man who'd controlled her was gone, the performance had become her. She didn't know how to stop pretending. Didn't know who she was without the mirror.
Yeah. I’m raising Mami to the top of the list now. Although I’m looking at all three.
Hiro grabbed my attention. "We should check the bedrooms."
I nodded, but couldn't stop looking at that final painting—Sol entangled with both twins, worshipped, claimed, and seen.
One woman.
Two dragon-kings who would burn the world for her.