Chapter 290: The Line She Drew

For a moment, the room was painfully still.

Orion’s words hung in the air between all of them. Sophia stared at him, stunned, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. The idea that her mother could be involved in black magic was so absurd, so out of place with the fragment of memory she’d recovered, that her brain rejected it entirely.

Finally, she let out a small, breathless laugh.

"Orion... please." She shook her head. "That’s impossible."

Orion didn’t blink at her words. He just gave her a blank stare.

Sophia exhaled and tried to soften her voice, even though her body still ached, even though she was tired and the memory still lingered painfully behind her ribs.

"I’m serious," she said quietly. "There was absolutely nothing in that room linked to my mother doing black magic. Nothing. I would’ve noticed."

"You were six," Orion replied, tone flat.

"I still would’ve noticed."

"No, shorty." He leaned forward slightly, eyes dark, voice low. "You would’ve noticed now. You wouldn’t have noticed then."

Sophia frowned at him. "Orion—"

"What if things changed?" he said, cutting her off. His jaw was tight, his shoulders tense again. "What if she changed? What if the woman you remember at six isn’t the same woman now?"

Sophia stared at him, stunned by the intensity in his gaze.

She opened her mouth to answer, but another voice broke through the tension first.

Madam Tyler.

She had been silent for so long that Sophia had almost forgotten she was in the room.

But now, the older woman stepped forward with a quiet sigh.

"Orion is right," Madam Tyler said gently. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Sophia turned to her sharply. "You too?"

Madam Tyler nodded. "Child, listen. You recovered one memory. One. A single shard of a shattered mirror. That doesn’t mean you suddenly know everything about your mother. Or what she became. Or what she did after that particular moment in time."

Sophia’s lips pressed together.

Madam Tyler continued, voice softer. "Memory is fragile. Trauma freezes pieces of it. Alters it. Hides it. Returning one memory doesn’t mean the mother you remember is the mother who existed later."

Sophia dragged a hand through her hair. "I know that. I know. But this—this is different. I just... don’t see her practicing black magic. It doesn’t fit."

"And why not?" Orion asked.

Sophia looked up at him. He stared back at her with a frown like he really needed to know why she didn’t think so.

She swallowed.

"Because the woman I remember... she didn’t need magic to hurt people." Her tone was flat, almost emotionless. "She already did enough damage without it."

Orion’s face fell slightly. He had no counter for that.

Sophia continued, voice tightening. "Her heart itself was black. Pure black. She didn’t need spells or rituals to destroy things—she did that all on her own just fine." She shook her head. "It just feels wrong. Wrong to tie her to magic. Wrong to pin this on her when I... I just can’t come to the conclusion that she has anything to do with black magic."

Madam Tyler exchanged a glance with Lysander, who looked down at his boots.

Sophia breathed in slowly. "And besides... black magic is complicated and ritualistic. It’s not something just anyone can do, especially with the consequences that come with it."

Her voice softened, but only slightly.

"And knowing myself... and how incredibly clumsy I am on a good day, I’m almost certain I just stumbled into something I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe some spell, or some residue, or whatever the hell it was. Maybe I tripped into it. Maybe I brushed against something."

Madam Tyler nodded slowly. "It is possible. Accidental contact with remnants of dark magic can leave marks. It can confuse the body. Especially if the soul was already unstable."

Sophia blinked. "See? That makes more sense. That makes a lot more sense than suddenly making my mother a black-magic practitioner."

"But the marks on your body were deliberate. It didn’t look like a mistake," Orion said softly.

"I still believe I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see or walked into something I wasn’t supposed to, and that was how the incisions came about," she told him.

"Sophia..." Orion called out with a groan.

While yes, he felt like Sophia could walk into something like that that made her end up with the incisions that had been on her body, he just found it hard to believe.

"I’m not saying you’re wrong," she told him quietly. "I’m saying it’s weird. Strange. And hard for me to picture."

Silence settled over the room again.

They were all absorbing her words.

Finally, Sophia turned her head slowly toward Orion. Her eyes were steadier now, calmer, but there was something sharp beneath them. Something determined.

She stared at him for a long moment before speaking.

"And even if," she said quietly, "even if my mother had anything to do with all of this..."

Orion looked up at her, tension crawling back into his jaw.

Sophia held his gaze with chilling certainty.

"...I’m the one who would do the killing," she finished. "Not you."

The room snapped still at her words.

Orion froze. He had not been expecting that from her, but it also wasn’t surprising that she had said it.

Sophia didn’t look away from him. Not once. Not for a second.

"I mean it," she said, voice steady. "If she hurt me now, or hurt me then, or hurt me ever... then it’s my fight. My history. My right." Her expression darkened. "Not yours."

Orion swallowed, throat bobbing hard. "Sophia—"

"No," she whispered. "You don’t get to kill her for me."

Her voice was firm.

"If she’s part of this," Sophia continued, "then I’ll handle her. I’ll be the one to end it. I’ll be the one to finish what she started. You don’t get to carry that weight. You don’t get to fight for me because you told me yourself that I wasn’t weak. I’ll do it myself, do you understand?" she asked him.