Chapter 255 Tessa

• The light that filtered into the room the next morning felt like a judgment. It was gray and cold, stripped of the firelight’s mercy. Tessa woke up alone in the massive bed, the silk sheets tangled around her limbs like a reminder of everything she had surrendered. The air in the room was still, but the silence had changed. It no longer felt like a vacuum; it felt like a bruise.
• She sat up, pulling the robe tight around her. Every muscle in her body ached with a physical manifestation of her betrayal. She was an organizer of lives, a protector of the "Golden Standard," and in one night of fueled anger and desperate hunger, she had burned her own blueprint to the ground.
• She walked to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face. Her reflection was a stranger. Her lips were bruised, her eyes shadowed. She looked like a woman who had survived a wreck, only to realize she was the one who had steered into the wall.