Chapter 5

TESSA POV

"Didn't Maya also announce, earlier at the start of the function, that she'd been accepted into the International Medicine Academy too?" One of the guests frowned, looking between Maya and me.

"She did," another said, shaking her head. "Maybe they gave them admission together."

"But from what I know, only one person can be admitted from a single city," a third guest countered. "How could both Tessa and Maya be accepted from our city at the same time? That's not possible."

A murmur spread through the hall, whispers passing from one guest to another, eyes flicking between Maya and me.

"One of them must be lying," Jasper, one of my master's friends, said.

My fingers curled slightly against the edge of my dress. He was right. Only one person from our city could have been accepted, and that person was me. I lifted my eyes toward Maya. She stood stiffly, the smile she'd worn all evening dissolving by degrees. She knew. She knew exactly what I was about to do.

In my previous life, I had been the one accepted into the International Medicine Academy. It had been one of the happiest moments of my life, proof that the years of sleepless nights, the countless hours spent buried in medical texts, researching illnesses, testing formulas, developing medicines of my own, had meant something at all.

I had given it away to Maya, because Soren told me to.

I could still remember exactly how he had looked at me when he asked. “You don't need it as much as Maya does.” He'd told me she needed the opportunity more than I did, and then, when that wasn't enough, he had offered me a trade: if I gave up my admission, he would finally accept me as his fiancée.

I had believed him. I had actually believed that surrendering my own future would be enough to earn his love. When even that wasn't reason enough, he'd given me another, that I was going to marry him anyway, so there was no need for me to work; that no hospital would hire a woman my size regardless; that a doctor needed to be fit, as if my mind mattered less than my body ever had to him. Every cruel word felt like the truth, because it came from the man I loved.

So I gave it up. I handed Maya the future that belonged to me, and in return she took my research, built her reputation on the back of my work, became celebrated as a medical genius while I stood in the shadows congratulating myself on my sacrifice.

Not this time. I had died once already, carrying every regret and betrayal etched into memory. I would not give my future away again, not for Soren, not for Maya, not for anyone.

I lifted my chin. "I'm not lying." My voice came out calm, almost pleasant. "I have the admission letter in my email. I'm happy to show everyone, if you'd like."

The murmuring stopped. I could feel the weight of the entire hall settling on me, and I let myself enjoy it. Maya had announced her admission earlier tonight, before I'd said a single word, using it to polish her reputation in front of the very crowd that had just watched me choose Malcolm over the man everyone expected me to marry.

She had done it certain that Soren would make me fold again, the way I always had. She was waiting for history to repeat itself.

She had calculated wrong.

I took out my phone and opened my email. The letter was still there, fresh, real, untouched. I turned the screen toward the guests nearest me. "This is my admission letter."

Someone gasped. "So it's true."

"She really was accepted."

"Then what about Maya?"

Maya's face had gone pale, the color draining from it in one slow wave.

Soren pushed forward through the crowd, his voice low and furious. "What the hell are you doing?"

I looked at him without flinching. He'd cornered me earlier tonight, before the engagement, asking why I needed to announce this at all. I had told him only that I wanted to surprise my master, and he made me promise not to announce it, that he wanted me to hand my place to Maya.

"Haven't I already spoken to you about this?" he demanded, close enough now that I could see the muscle jumping in his jaw.

"And so?" Two words, and I watched something in him falter. For the first time, I felt no need to explain myself to him at all. "I told you we'd talk about it later. I never said I would give it up."

I raised my phone higher and reached into my bag for the printed copy, the paper rustling loudly in the sudden hush.

"Everyone here can see the letter in my email. I also have this, if anyone wants to examine it themselves."

"Then it was Maya who lied?" Grace, one of the girls nearby, looked genuinely shocked. "How could she?"

"No, I didn't!" Maya's voice cracked, tears already gathering. "I really was accepted."

"Then show us your evidence," Naya pressed, arms crossed.

Maya's mouth opened, closed. "I… I…" Her lips trembled, and nothing more came. The silence that followed was louder than any accusation could have been. Then the tears spilled over, and she turned and fled through the crowd, her heels striking the marble in a broken, stumbling rhythm until the sound of her crying faded past the doors.

"She's a liar." The words rippled outward, gathering speed. "Then why announce it at all?"

"Did she really think no one would check?" I watched their faces turn on her exactly as they'd turned on me an hour earlier, the same hunger, simply pointed somewhere new. In my previous life I would have chased after her. I would have apologized, would have offered to give my admission up all over again just to stop the whispering. Not anymore.

I watched Soren's face darken. For a second I thought he might turn to me. Instead he followed Maya out without a single glance back, and something in my chest curved into something almost like a smile. Even now, with her exposed in front of everyone who mattered, he still chose to run after her. That was Soren. The same man I had once loved enough to burn my whole future down for.

"I would like to retire for the evening," I said, and walked away before anyone could answer.

The night air outside the hall hit my skin like something physical, cool and sharp after the heat of all those bodies and all that attention, and only then did I notice my hands were trembling.

I pressed my palm flat against my chest and let myself feel it, not guilt, though I searched for it and found none, but something closer to hunger. Everything tonight pressed down at once: dying in a fire I could still feel behind my closed eyes, waking into a life I'd thought lost forever, choosing Malcolm in front of a room that despised me, the ring cool and unfamiliar on my finger, the heirloom chain resting against my collarbone, and now this — Maya crumbling in front of the very people who had worshipped her an hour before.

This was only the beginning.

I touched the admission letter through the fabric of my bag. It was ordinary paper, and yet it represented everything I had once thrown away for a man who never deserved a single piece of it. Soren had taken my future, my dignity, my life itself, and handed all of it to a woman who had earned none of it.

I intended to take back every piece, one by one, until neither of them had anything left to stand on. And I intended to become everything they had once told me I never could be, a renowned physician, a woman whose name meant something far beyond the size of her body or the man she had once foolishly loved.

I wondered how long it would take Maya to construct some new lie to save what was left of her reputation. I wondered whether Soren would come to me quietly, still believing I owed that admission to someone else. I wondered whether the hall behind me would even remember, by morning, that they had once called her their golden girl.

I couldn't wait to find out.