Maya would have felt guilty for leaving the way she had if not for the importance of it.

That was the first thing sitting quietly inside her as she stood among them again, one hand held by Phei, her silver hair falling softly down her shoulders while the morning light of Infinity Chaos Hotel poured across the penthouse glass and turned the room into a bright, expensive cage of warmth.

Guilt was a strange thing and it was never roaring; sometimes it slipped in quietly, sat beside the heart, folded its hands and waited to be noticed like a well-mannered poison.

She had disappeared for hours and worse, because of whatever had happened, because of the shroud that had wrapped around memory itself, she had vanished from their minds as though she had never belonged there.

And yet, when she returned, they had not looked at her like a stranger.

That was what surprised her most.

Unlike what Maya had expected from Phei’s women and the princesses, they had actually missed her:

Sierra, Victoria, Maddie, Delilah, Cassiopeia, Patricia, Emily, Valentina and the others had not treated her like a strange admirer who occasionally rambled herself into emotional weather.

They had crowded her with questions one after another, overlapping, sharp, worried, curious, half-accusing and half-relieved. Even the ones who carried pride like jewelry had looked at her with something softer beneath their lashes, something that told Maya her absence had disturbed more than convenience.

It had disturbed belonging...

Maddie, of all people, had been the worst.

Or the best.

Possibly both, which was very Maddie of her.

The chaos demoness had saved several questions from yesterday, apparently collecting them like expensive knives, and now she had the whole morning to ask them while holding Maya in her arms as if the Scarlett Moon were her long-lost younger sister she had loved since childhood. Her arm remained around Maya’s shoulders, her cheek occasionally pressing against Maya’s hair, and every time Maya tried to answer one question, Maddie asked another before the first answer could safely land.

It should have been overwhelming.

It was, honestly.

But it was also warm.

Phei had looked surprised too.

He stood near the long couch, watching Maddie hug Maya like that, something faint and careful shifting behind his amethyst eyes. It was no secret that Maddie and Sierra had once viewed Maya as Phei’s admirer, a gentle rambling disaster who appeared around him with devotion so visible it made stealth impossible.

They had not disliked her exactly, but they had not known where to place her either.

Maya had been soft, persistent, oddly radiant, and far too emotionally present for women already guarding spaces around Phei’s heart.

But that had been changing.

Slowly before and drastically now.

There was nothing like having someone vanish from memory itself to make everyone realize she had already been occupying space there.

’The human mind is very rude like that. One often needs loss to confirm value of a person, a terrible design; no wonder people require so many songs.’

"So," Maddie said something she had been holding back, still holding Maya against her side, "where were you?"

Maya looked up.

The entire room quieted slightly.

Phei’s attention sharpened at once, though his face remained calm.

Sierra sat near the edge of the couch, hands folded, her soft expression hiding razor observation. Victoria stood near the windows with Nastya beside her, both princesses too proud to look worried and too human to hide it completely. Delilah leaned against one armrest, quiet. Cassiopeia sat serene, almost impossibly still, her eyes fixed on Maya with a depth that suggested she had noticed more than she intended to say. Patricia’s book lay forgotten on her lap. Emily, Catrina and Valentina stood close enough that their concern felt like another body in the room.

Maya blinked at them.

Then answered with devastating simplicity.

"Grandma called me," she said. "I was home."

For a second, no one spoke.

Then Delilah and Valentina frowned at the exact same time.

"You flew back to Paradise?" they asked together.

Maya shook her head at once. "No. My family’s main home is actually here in Hell’s Paradise Island. Well, not main-main in the sense of everything, because families like mine tend to have several homes and then pretend that is normal, which is honestly a bit confusing because one should have one home and maybe another for seasons, but then there are ancestral houses, formal houses, hidden houses, houses no one talks about, houses used only for rituals, so to say, houses used only because some great-grandmother dislikes the way sunlight enters the other one, and then someone calls one of them the main home even though everyone knows—"

Maddie flicked her forehead.

"Ouch."

"The first answer was enough, you rambling cutie."

Maya put both hands over her forehead and looked wounded in the most delicate way possible. "That was not rambling. That was context."

"That was a family property dissertation wearing a white dress."

"I was being informative."

"You were committing architecture gossip."

Phei laughed while Sierra’s mouth curved.

Patricia covered her lips, though the smile escaped anyway. Valentina leaned into the couch with a quiet laugh, and even Victoria’s eyes softened by an infuriatingly tiny amount. Maya rubbed her forehead, then continued with solemn dignity that fooled absolutely no one.

"What I mean is, we have lived here for a long time. Not openly, not exactly, because my grandmother prefers distance, privacy, secrecy, atmospheric and other decisions that make visiting people unnecessarily dramatic. But yes, my home is here."

"Where exactly?" Sierra asked.

Maya’s expression brightened. "Oh, actually, that is easy."

Phei immediately became suspicious.

Nothing about Maya saying that is easy had ever remained easy.

She stood and slipped out of Maddie’s arm with a soft little motion, and gestured for them to follow. "Come."

Naturally, they followed.

Phei went first at her side, because Phei following Maya anywhere with an unresolved memory-erasure incident hanging over them was either trust, foolishness, love or some beautiful cocktail of all three.

Maddie came behind them, then Sierra, Valentina, Patricia, Delilah, Victoria, Nastya, Catrina Cassiopeia and Emily and even Lydia followed, the whole group moving toward the higher observation section of the suite where the ceiling rose into glass and the windows opened the world beneath them like a divine painting framed by absurd money.

The space was breathtaking even by Hell’s Paradise standards.

The glass curved overhead and outward, turning the room into a bright observatory suspended above the island.

Morning sunlight poured down in long golden sheets, catching the polished floor, the white furniture, the gleaming railing and the soft reflections of women beautiful enough to make ordinary mirrors develop self-esteem issues.

Far below, the city and forest lay layered in mist and green. The height was ridiculous. Infinity Chaos Hotel did not stand over Hell’s Paradise Island so much as dominate it, a sovereign tower arrogant enough to make mountains feel like unfinished attempts.

Maya walked toward the glass and pointed.

"There."

Phei looked.

At first, he expected nothing.

They were too high. Too far. The distance between the hotel and anything beyond its immediate reach should have swallowed detail into atmosphere. Even with his vision, even with senses far beyond ordinary eyes, the island’s scale from up here was monstrous.

Infinity Chaos Hotel monopolized the skyline so completely that everything else seemed either beneath it or beyond it.

If anything, the height made distance more distinct, stretching the world into layers of forest, river, fog and light.

Then he saw it... everyone saw it...