“Elena?” William called out, rushing from the bench, terrified by her sudden collapse. “Are you okay?”
He knelt before her, reaching out to steady her shoulders.
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the vertigo. The pieces of the tea cup lay around them like the fragments of her false life. The dizziness spun, then slowed. The fog lifted.
She opened her eyes.
The hazy, confused look of “Elena” was gone. In its place was a sharp, piercing clarity–the gaze of the woman who had worn the Revenge Dress and survived the avalanche.
She looked at the man kneeling in front of her. She looked at his blue eyes, the worry lines on his forehead, the way he held her arms. She knew him.
“William,” she whispered.
It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration. The word hung in the air, changing the physics of the world around them.