Chapter 10
If I had to summarize everything, it would be this:
I spent four lifetimes pretending to be a docile little songbird, only to disappear at the exact moment she believed she had finally tamed me.
That was the truth of it.
Not a grand romance. Not redemption. Not healing through love.
Just a woman clawing her way out of a cage until the world itself finally made room for her freedom.
Dana Cenyue and I had circled each other through life after life.
In one, we drowned together. In another, I poisoned her. In another, she chained me until I could barely remember my own name. In the last, I smiled sweetly, lowered my eyes, and played obedient until she thought she was the one in control.
But the final move was mine.
And because it was mine, it mattered.
That was something I carried with me longer than fear. Longer than anger. Longer even than the relief of escape.
Choice.
Mine.
Not Dana’s. Not the system’s. Not fate’s.
Mine.
I chose to run. I chose to survive. I chose not to romanticize what had nearly destroyed me. I chose not to return just because someone else called obsession love.
And after all these years, that still feels like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done.
Sometimes I still visit the sea.
Never the same stretch of water where we died the first time.
A different coast. A different country. A different life.
I sit in the sun with cold soda in my hand and let the wind tangle my hair.
Children run past. Dogs bark somewhere in the distance. Music drifts out from cafés.
Ordinary life continues around me, careless and bright.
I used to think freedom would feel explosive.
Instead, it feels like this.
A breeze across bare skin. A passport in my own bag. A phone no one tracks. A future no one else gets to script for me.
I think that is better.
Much better.
As for Dana, maybe somewhere in this vast world she still looks up sometimes when she hears a certain laugh. Maybe she still turns when she sees a woman in a pale dress from the corner of her eye. Maybe she still reaches the end of every search with empty hands and realizes all over again that I really am gone.
If so, let her.
She once wanted me to live in longing.
In the end, that longing became hers.
And mine became freedom.
So if anyone ever asks how the story ends, I know exactly what to say.
It ends with me alive.
It ends with me untouchable.
It ends with the cage empty and the door standing open.
And it ends with one last sentence meant only for her.
Dana Cenyue—
in this life, and every life after it,
we will never meet again.