Chapter 153

Elara’s POV

Seventeen rejection letters. I counted them again, spread across the narrow table like a deck of losing cards.

The apartment was barely an apartment. A single room above a laundry service, with a mattress on the floor, a wobbly table, and a window that didn’t close all the way. Wind whistled through the gap, carrying the smell of detergent and damp concrete. I’d found the listing pinned to a board outside a bakery—cheapest rent in the district, and now I understood why.

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