The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 601

Laura's body snapped taut, as though an unseen wire had been yanked straight through the length of her spine.

"Listen closely. From this moment on, do not come near me—no matter what excuse you think you have. I won't come near you either. Whatever the future brings, you'll be a stranger to me, nothing more."

The words, glacial and metallic, rasped across the air as slate dragged over glass.

"Fine. I understand," she whispered, voice flat yet unswerving. Without another look, she pivoted and strode out of the lounge.

Left alone, Weston fished a cigarette and a silver lighter from his jacket, sparked the tip, and drew in a long breath.

White ribbons of smoke curled toward the ceiling while he sagged back into the leather couch, weight hitting the cushions as though they were the only things keeping him upright.

Stay away from me, or God help me, I might not be able to stop myself next time, he murmured to the empty room. Even he had no idea what he might do if that moment ever came.

Quinn returned to the sprawling library and stopped before the glass case that displayed the book still marred by the blood of Julius' mother.

She had never planned to read the book. Yet for two straight days, it kept resurfacing in her mind like a half-remembered melody.

Now, separated by the glass door of the display cabinet, she found herself staring at the volume as though it held the answer to a question she had not yet asked.

Julius had told her this was the last book his mother read in her final days—a slim tome on geography and local customs.

These two days, they had spoken of his mother's quiet fondness for such volumes, how she would borrow stacks of them from the library. Most of those borrowed pages, he said, belonged to the very same genre: explorations of distant lands she would never see, yet loved all the same.

She had spent so long caged inside that remote villa on the outskirts of Yarburn that the word freedom had become a myth, a distant shoreline she studied from behind iron bars. The only breeze she could steal drifted out from the pages of whatever novel she was reading, and even that frail gust vanished the instant she folded the book shut.

The notion alone pressed on Quinn's chest, slow and unrelenting, until every breath felt like the labor of lifting a stone.

She opened the cabinet, lifted the blood-stained volume with careful fingers, and began to leaf through the fragile pages.

What had filled the final days of the woman Joaquin once loved so fiercely—Julius' tragic, long-silenced mother?

Julius' fingers closed, almost wooden, around the brittle envelope.

Could this be a letter from Mother? If it is, then whom did she intend it for?

What if that terrible possibility were real? If so, this letter—yellowed at the edges like a wilting petal—must have been addressed to someone else. But to whom had Mother entrusted these words?

He unfolded the brittle envelope with measured care. The moment the paper breathed open, familiar loops and strokes leapt toward him—his mother's hand, unmistakable.

As a boy, he had chased that handwriting the way other children chased kites. Books she marked, margins she filled with fleeting thoughts—he had copied every curve in secret, hungry for some echo of affection.

When a word eluded him, he would haunt dictionaries or press the housemaids for answers, determined never to let one of her marks remain a mystery. In time, her handwriting etched itself into his mind as surely as a brand.

But the very first salutation struck him like a blow. The name "Joaquin Whitethorn" sat atop the page, cold and irrevocable. The letter, then, was meant for his father.

The letter read: "Joaquin Whitethorn, you are a demon—someone forever incapable of love. You caged me here and destroyed those I truly cared for, so I curse you. May you lose everyone you hold dear and forever be denied the thing you most desire. You have caged me in this place and wounded the one person I truly love. Therefore, I curse you. You will lose what you hold dear and forever grasp at desires you can never attain. I hope your love for me is as you claim—so deep you cannot bear my absence. If that is true, then keep the promise you once swore to me. No matter what happens, you are to remain alive. You are forbidden to end your own life. I am desperate to know what your days will look like once I am gone. Will the torment be so absolute that heaven and earth become your prison cell, every breath a sentence? Sadly, I will never witness it."