The silence that descended when I lifted the veil was absolute, the kind that precedes a landslide. But there was no calm inside me, only a cascade of disbelief, then recognition, then a white-hot fury that tore through my chest.
This wasn’t Clara.
The face before me was similar, true—the same sharp cheekbones, the same fair coloring. But the eyes were different. Wider, their depths unreadable. And I knew this face. I had passed it in the
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