Chapter 149
What Cannot Be Repaid
Room Twenty was the schoolroom where Rowan first learned to write her name.
The desk held two forms: one for compensation and one for apology.
Rowan took the apology.
“Money cannot return the years,” she said.
Aster took the compensation form.
“It can return choices.”
They signed separately.
Claire watched them.
She had spent the entire investigation treating truth as a door. Now she understood it was a room people had to live in afterward.
The school bell rang.
Room Twenty-One opened beneath the city.
On its door appeared one sentence:
THE LAST WITNESS IS THE ONE WHO SURVIVES THE TRUTH.