I had done it, I see now, because some clear part of me, even then, even inside the cell I had helped build, had refused to accept the one premise underneath all of it: that my ability to be a mother should depend on a man’s permission, or a man’s body, or a man’s pride.

It never should.

It never should for any woman.

And so, when I was free at last, the choice was already there, waiting, made years earlier by a version of myself who had been quietly refusing to surrender the whole time.

Her name is Rose.

She slept against my chest that afternoon in the courtyard while the sunlight moved slowly across her hair, and she knew nothing of trusts or twins or betrayals, and she never will need to.