“You did get to know me.” She cut him off. “You got to know me so well that I told you I’ve been used and manipulated and lied to before, and I told you what that did to me, and at no point, not once, did you stop me and admit that you were doing exactly the same thing. Jesus, Jamie. We kissed in the woods, for fuck’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Why did you keep lying to me?”

Jamie’s eyes were stormy with guilt and regret, and it took him a moment to say it.

“Because we couldn’t trust you not to tell the other witches.”

Ah, there it was. She had put herself at risk by coming here, she had put her whole soul into teaching three wonderful children how to use their power, and she had let every person in this house into her heart—and still, they hadn’t trusted her. Nothing she’d done had been enough. She hadn’t been enough.

It was the obvious explanation for the lies she’d been told, of course, but she’d needed to hear him say it, just as she’d needed to see the bones beneath the sunflowers.

Quietly, feeling almost as if she was in a dream, she returned the bones to the grave in the ground and moved the sunflower patch back into place. Gold threads of magic dug deep into the soil, twining the roots of the flowers back into the earth.

“I’m done,” she said, very softly. “You were right. You hurt me, and I’m leaving. You know us both very well.”

“Mika, please—”

“I can’t be here,” she said, and added, as an afterthought: “I’ll come back on the twenty-sixth, just for Edward’s visit.”

“Forget about Edward for a minute. Just listen to me—”

But she couldn’t listen. She couldn’t bear to. So she just kept talking. “I don’t know how to glamour myself, but there might be another way to trick Edward into thinking Lillian’s still alive and buy you some more time. I’ll see what I can come up with. It’s the least I can do for the girls. Then I’ll get the rest of my stuff and leave for good.”

He said nothing more.

“Thank you,” she added. “For telling me the truth, even if it’s come just a little too late.”

When she walked away, he didn’t stop her.