Mother's bed chamber smelled like orange resin, healer’s smoke, and the kind of expensive silence only royal families could afford. Not quiet. Quiet was honest. Quiet was a library after midnight, or Cassie’s breathing against the back of my neck when she fell asleep before admitting she was tired, or the little hush that came over Starveil’s trees when the wind paused to listen to itself. This was silence with staff.
Silence with polished floors and warded windows and three healers moving like if they stepped too loudly, death might remember it had been invited and come back for seconds. Silence with bowls of crushed goldleaf herbs on the side tables, sun-warmed stones arranged around the bed, and my mother lying in the center of it all like the court had built an altar around her and then forgotten to tell anyone she was not supposed to look like an offering.
High Lady Seara Firebrand did not look like someone who could be unconscious. That was the most offensive part. She should have been sitting up, terrifying everyone into usefulness, making some healer regret the order of their own breathing, and telling me I looked pale in the specific tone that meant she was worried but would rather choke on her own crown than admit it like a normal person. Instead she lay beneath a coverlet embroidered in crimson and gold, her molten hair braided back from her face, her skin warm but too still, the Flame Cut Crown absent from her brow. Without it, she looked less like Summer and more like my mother.
Which was rude of her, honestly. Deeply inconsiderate. I had a whole structure of anger built around the High Lady of Summer. It was architecturally sound. Load-bearing. Very useful in storms. I did not appreciate her lying there in a white healing gown with her lashes dark against her cheeks and making all my carefully labeled emotional categories start leaking into one another.
Cassie’s fingers brushed mine once, not a grab, not a leash, not even a question, just there. I let my hand shift enough that our knuckles touched. I had discovered, sometime in the last year of surviving absolute nonsense, that my body had become embarrassingly fluent in Cassie. A graze meant breathe. A thumb over my pulse meant I see you spiraling, idiot. A hand at the small of my back meant I am here, and I am deciding whether murder is necessary, please advise. This touch was softer than that. This one said, You do not have to turn her into a title to survive looking at her. So obviously I resented it.
Selene stood on the far side of the bed, straight-backed and immaculate in pale gold, her hair arranged in a crown of braids threaded with tiny ruby pins. She looked like a statue someone had taught to inhale politely. If you did not know her, you might have thought she was calm.
I knew her. I saw the almost invisible pressure of her fingertips against the carved bedpost. I saw the way her shoulders held themselves a fraction too still, the way her chin tilted at the exact angle Mother used when the court was watching and blood was in the water. Selene was preparing for her wedding with her mother unconscious in front of her, because apparently Firebrand women inherited trauma, cheekbones, and the inability to have a normal weekday.
Uncle Tharion stood near the windows, arms folded, sun-bleached hair tied back in a soldier’s knot. He had not sat down. I doubted he had sat down since the Conclave. There was a chair beside him, placed by some optimistic servant who clearly did not understand that Tharion Firebrand did not use furniture when helplessness was available as an alternative.
He looked at the senior healer. “Again.”
The healer, a narrow woman with bronze skin and silver-threaded braids, did not flinch, which meant she was either very brave, very tired, or had already decided Tharion was less frightening than the High Lady’s daughters. “Her physical recovery continues to improve. The damage from the Conclave is closing. Her internal flame has stabilized further since yesterday. The soul-threading is no longer fraying at the edges.” I hated healer language. It made everything sound like embroidery, as if my mother’s life were a hemline that had come loose.
“And consciousness?” Selene asked. Her voice was perfect, warm, composed, clear, the kind of voice that made people believe there was a plan.
The healer’s face softened in a way that made my stomach drop before she even answered. “We believe she is closer.”
“That is not an answer,” Tharion said.
“No,” the healer replied carefully. “It is an honest answer.”
The room went very still. Cassie’s fingers threaded through mine. This time, it was less suggestion and more anchor. The healer looked from Tharion to Selene, then to me. I was still getting used to that. People looking at me in rooms where Mother was present, even unconscious. As if I were not just the youngest daughter with bad impulse control and a concerning habit of destabilizing governments before lunch. As if my face was another place authority might be found. Deeply unfortunate development. Would not recommend.
“High Lady Seara’s body is repairing faster than expected,” the healer said. “Her magic is no longer attacking the healing work. The periods of deeper response have increased. She reacts to familiar voices, particularly familial voices. But waking is not a door we can force open without risking damage. Her consciousness must return through its own path.”
My mouth tasted like metal. “How long?”
The healer hesitated. That was worse than an answer. Selene’s fingers tightened on the bedpost. The healer said, “Possibly days. Possibly longer. I do not believe we are speaking in months anymore, Your Highness. But I cannot promise she will wake before the wedding.” There it was, the thing we had all known and no one had wanted to give shape.
Selene’s expression did not change. That was how I knew it hurt. If it had only annoyed her, she might have arched a brow. If it had only angered her, she might have smiled with the wrong edge. But this went somewhere too deep for performance to reach. Her face simply became more perfect, which was the ugliest kind of grief, because the court would applaud it as strength. I hated them for that, preemptively and efficiently.
“I see,” Selene said. No, she didn’t. Or she did, and that was worse.
“You could postpone,” Tharion said.
Selene turned her head toward him, and the look she gave him was gentle enough to hurt. “For how long?”
His jaw flexed.
“If Mother wakes the next day, I will have delayed for nothing and given the court another reason to whisper that Summer cannot stand without her eyes open.” Selene’s voice remained soft, but something in it had sharpened. “If she does not wake for another week, another month, do I keep postponing? Do I teach Dusk that Summer’s vows can be held hostage by uncertainty? Do I teach our own nobles that my life waits for permission from a sickbed?”
“She is your mother,” Tharion said, and for once he did not sound like a general.
Selene looked back at the bed. “Yes,” she said. “She is.” I wished she would cry. I wished, selfishly and horribly, that she would break first so I could be allowed to break after her and not feel like I had started it. But Selene had been trained by Mother, which meant she knew how to bleed in ways that did not stain the carpet.
A knock sounded at the outer door. I turned too sharply, my braid swinging over one shoulder as Cassie’s hand tightened on mine like she could physically hold my irritation inside my skin. Good luck to her. Brave woman. Terrible odds.
One of the attendants opened the door and murmured something to Selene’s lady-in-waiting. The woman glanced toward us with the expression of someone who desperately wished royal grief and wedding logistics did not have to share a calendar.
Selene inhaled once. “Send them in.”
I blinked. “Send who in?”
“The court tailors,” Selene said.
I stared at her. “Now?”
Her mouth curved faintly. Not a smile. More like the memory of one that had survived a house fire. “Unless you intend to stand beside me at my wedding in yesterday’s riding leathers and Cassie’s bite marks.”
Cassie went very still. I slowly turned my head toward my wife. Cassie’s face did absolutely nothing, which meant she was guilty and pleased about it. “First of all,” I said, because dignity was dead and someone had to speak at the funeral, “those are not visible.”
Selene looked at my throat. I slapped a hand over the spot. Tharion made a sound that might have been a cough if he had ever coughed like a man with a soul. Cassie’s mouth twitched. “You are all terrible,” I informed the room.
“And yet,” Selene said, “you are still my Heart Witness.”
That shut me up. Very annoying, when people used feelings with accuracy. Felt like cheating. The tailors entered in a sweep of pale measuring cords, garment folios, floating trays of fabric, and the tense reverence of professionals who had been told they were fitting a princess beside the unconscious High Lady of Summer and had decided, reasonably, that breathing was now a privilege. There were four of them: two Summer Court tailors in crimson-edged black, one Starveil seam-mage with moonstone pins arranged along her sleeves, and one older woman whose sharp eyes went directly to my waist before darting away like she had just remembered royal pregnancies were not to be visually acknowledged without permission.
Cassie noticed. Of course she did. Her scent sharpened at the edges, frosted citrus cooling into something lethal and clean. She did not move in front of me. She did not need to. The air around her developed opinions.
The older tailor swallowed. “Your Highness. Princess Cassandra.”
“Princess Consort,” Cassie corrected mildly.
Mildly, from Cassie, meant everyone had one chance to keep their organs where they currently lived, and the tailor bowed lower. “Princess Consort.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Not because it was funny. Because Cassie being terrifyingly formal in defense of my body made something in my chest go stupid and warm, and I was not emotionally prepared to deal with that while Mother lay unconscious three feet away. One crisis at a time. I was a disaster, not a buffet.
The Starveil seam-mage approached me with a length of fabric draped over both arms. It looked dark at first, almost black, but when she turned, the silk caught the light and became deep violet, then blue, then the smoky red of embers banked beneath ash. Tiny points of silver thread moved through it like stars seen through branches, and for a moment I forgot to be annoyed.
“Oh,” I said.
Selene’s gaze softened.
The seam-mage bowed. “For the Heart Witness of the bride. Princess Selene requested Summer flame be present, but not dominant. Starveil answered the rest.”
My spine prickled. “Starveil answered?”
The seam-mage’s fingers tightened reverently on the fabric. “The threadwork would not hold any other pattern, Your Highness.”
Naturally. Because why would my court behave like fabric was fabric when it could instead develop a personality and embarrass me in front of professionals? Cassie leaned close enough that her breath warmed my ear. “It has taste.” I elbowed her lightly. She smiled like she had won something.
The tailors guided me onto a low fitting platform near the windows, which felt absurdly ceremonial for a dress fitting and also like a trap because everyone could see me. Cassie stayed close enough that the hem of her sleeve brushed my arm. Selene remained by Mother’s bed, but her eyes followed the fabric as the seam-mage lifted it against me.
The gown was not mine yet. Not fully. It was a possibility pinned in air: twilight silk falling from one shoulder, structured through the bodice but loose enough beneath the ribs that no one would dare call attention to why. Ember-thread curved along the seams like contained flame. Starlight gathered at the cuffs. A narrow sash of molten gold would cross from shoulder to waist, marking my place in the ceremony. Not bride. Not ruler. Not weapon. Sister. The thought hit so hard I almost stepped off the platform. Cassie’s hand found my elbow. The tailor kneeling by my hem froze.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically. Cassie’s eyes flicked to mine. I sighed. “I am experiencing one emotion and handling it with my usual grace.”
“Poorly,” she murmured.
“With my usual grace.”
Selene’s lips curved for real this time, just barely. Good. Fine. If I had to be measured like a ceremonial goat beside my unconscious mother, at least Selene could smile once. The older tailor began taking measurements with careful, respectful efficiency across the chest, shoulder, arm, waist, hip, and length. Every time the cord passed near my stomach, Cassie’s attention sharpened. She did not growl, barely, but one of the younger tailors made the wise decision to let the older woman handle that portion and suddenly became fascinated by a tray of pearl clasps on the other side of the room.
I pretended not to notice because I was generous. Also because if I acknowledged Cassie’s protective instincts directly, she might do that thing where her icy blue eyes brightened and her pupils dilated while her voice went low, and then I would have to remember there were other people in the room. Including my uncle. And my comatose mother. And my sister. And several innocent textile workers. Pregnancy had not made me dignified. It had made me worse with consequences. Selene watched the fitting for a moment, then looked back at Mother. Her smile faded. “I thought she would argue about the neckline,” she said quietly.
The room shifted. Not physically. Not magically. Just all of us hearing the sentence underneath the sentence. I thought she would be awake. The measuring cord around my wrist went slack. I looked at Mother. Her face remained still. The healer had said she responded to familiar voices, that she was closer, that she might wake soon, but probably not soon enough. Soon was such a cruel word. It sounded kind until it stood between you and the thing you needed.
“She would,” I said, because someone had to answer and apparently it was going to be me. “She would say it is too low, and then Cassie would say something polite that means absolutely not, and then Mother would pretend not to be impressed by her spine.”
Cassie’s mouth softened, and Selene’s eyes shone. “She would tell me my veil is politically unsubtle,” Selene said.
“It probably is.”
“It is not.”
“Then why did you answer so fast?”
Selene gave me a look. An actual sister look, not a duchess look. “Because you are irritating.”
“Emotionally, this is healing.”
Tharion turned from the window. “Your mother would also ask why the fittings are being conducted in her bedroom instead of the appointed bridal chamber. So your very old uncle doesn't have to witness his nieces standing around in their underthings.”
Selene’s expression flickered. He looked at her, and his sternness shifted into something rougher. “And then she would understand.” That almost did it. That almost cracked the room open. Selene bowed her head, not far, just enough that the ruby pins in her hair caught the lamplight like drops of blood. The door opened again before any of us could decide whether we were going to cry or commit violence against grief as a concept.
A new scent entered first: sun-warmed white tea, honeyed citrus, clean linen, and pale amber, bright and precise, Day Court elegance cutting through Summer’s smoke and medicine. Solenne Sunstrike stepped into the room. She was luminous in ivory and pale gold, her white-gold hair swept back in a style that made her look like daylight had learned discipline. She was not softer than Selene. That was the first thing I noticed. People might have expected that, because Day sounded brighter, kinder, cleaner than Summer. It wasn’t. Solenne was light sharp enough to expose what people had been hiding under velvet.
Her gaze found Selene first. For one suspended heartbeat, my sister and my other sister looked at each other across our mother’s sickroom, and the entire century they had not had together stood between them like a fourth person. Then Solenne’s eyes moved to the bed. Everything about her changed without moving. She did not gasp. She did not stumble. She did not make grief easy for anyone to witness. Crowned Princess of Day, daughter of Lior Sunstrike, heir of a court that made truth a form of law, she simply went very still. I knew that trick. Apparently all royal daughters were issued the same emotional coffin at birth. Different colors, same craftsmanship.
Selene crossed the room first. Not quickly. Selene did not rush unless someone was actively dying, and even then she made it look like ceremony. But she reached Solenne and took both her hands.
“You came,” Selene said.
Solenne’s fingers closed around hers. “Of course I came.” Of course. As if it had been simple. As if there had not been treaties, absences, Seara-shaped silences, a dead brother none of us had known how to mourn properly, and a century of birthday cups set for sisters who could not answer.
Solenne looked at me then. I was standing on a fitting platform with half a gown pinned to me, one sleeve hanging loose, hair probably doing something treasonous, and Cassie beside me radiating enough protective frost to make three tailors question their life choices. “Little star,” Solenne said softly. My throat closed. Rude. Absolutely uncalled for.
“Hi,” I managed, because I was a princess, a duchess, possibly a queen depending on whom you asked and how much I wanted to ruin my own day, and language remained my enemy in intimate situations.
Solenne’s mouth trembled once, then she looked back at the bed. Selene did not let go of her hand. “Do you want a moment?” Solenne’s eyes stayed on Mother. “No.” There was a brief pause before she added more quietly, “Yes.”
No one moved. Solenne seemed to hate that we had heard the correction. Good. Welcome to this family. We specialized in being emotionally compromised in groups. She approached the bed slowly. The tailors withdrew without being told, fabric folding itself back into obedient quiet. Even Cassie shifted half a step closer to me, giving Solenne more space without leaving me. Tharion straightened, his face going harder in recognition of another daughter entering the circumference of Seara’s damage. Solenne stopped beside the bed.
For a moment, she said nothing. Mother said nothing back. That was the awful thing about unconscious people. They made conversations into offerings. You could lay every word at their feet and never know if any of them reached. Solenne’s hand hovered above Mother’s. She did not touch her. “High Lady,” she said. The title landed wrong. Everyone felt it. Solenne’s jaw tightened, and for the first time since she entered, her composure cracked enough to show anger underneath. Not loud anger. Daylight anger. Clean, white hot, almost sacred in its refusal to pretend. “That is easier,” she said, mostly to herself. “That is what makes it unforgivable.”
Selene’s breath caught. Solenne lowered her hand and finally touched Mother’s fingers. “Mother,” she said. The word changed the room. Not magically. Not with fire or light or any dramatic nonsense the court poets would have ruined in three stanzas. It changed because it was too late and not too late at the same time. Because Solenne had spent more than a century with a mother who existed in treaty language, mirror calls, absences, and birthday rituals with empty cups. Because now that mother was here, warm, breathing, unable to answer. Solenne swallowed. “I am here. Selene asked me to stand with her, and I am here. Mira is here. She looks like someone trapped her in ceremonial fabric against her will.”
“Accurate,” I whispered, and Cassie squeezed my hand.
Solenne’s mouth moved like she almost smiled, but her eyes stayed on Mother. “You should wake before the wedding. I would like to be angry with you in person.”
I had to look down. The Starveil silk blurred. Solenne’s voice remained controlled, which somehow made it worse. “I have been angry at an idea for a long time. It is unsatisfying. I recommend against it. Ideas do not answer questions. They do not flinch. They do not explain why daughters were easier to leave apart than the politics that kept them separated.”
The healer near the back of the room bowed her head and pretended to check a basin. Tharion’s face looked carved from grief and command. Selene’s hands had folded together at her waist, knuckles pale. Solenne stroked her thumb once over Mother’s hand. “But Selene is getting married. And she wants you there. So if there is any part of you listening beneath all this very dramatic Firebrand stubbornness, you should know that your absence is not elegant. It is not strategic. It is not acceptable. It is simply painful.”
My laugh came out wrong, wet and small. Solenne looked over her shoulder at me, and for one strange second, I saw the sister she might have been if we had been allowed to know each other before catastrophe made introductions. Sharp. Warm in odd places. Capable of cutting through a lie without deciding that made her cruel. “She gets that from you,” Solenne told Mother, with a faint tilt of her head toward me.
“Excuse you,” I said.
“You are excused.”
“I don’t like Day Court honesty.”
“You seem like someone who dislikes most things that work.”
Cassie made a soft sound. I looked at her. “Do not encourage her.”
Cassie’s smile was small and devastating. “I like her.”
“Betrayal. In my own marriage.”
Solenne’s face softened, just for a moment, and then she looked at Selene. “Show me the veil?”
Selene blinked. “Now?”
Solenne’s brows lifted. “Unless Summer has a law against letting one’s sister see fabric in a sickroom.”
“Probably,” I muttered. “We have laws against everything fun.”
Tharion said, “Not everything.” We all looked at him. He stared back as if daring anyone to ask for examples. No one did. We were wounded, not suicidal.
The tailors, sensing permission to exist again, resumed their work. One opened a long box lined in gold silk and lifted out Selene’s veil. It was not white. Of course it wasn’t. Summer would rather combust than be that straightforward. The veil was pale gold so sheer it looked like sunlight had been spun too thin, edged in storm-violet thread for Dusk and tiny black crystals that caught light like night rain. Along the crown line, nearly invisible until the fabric moved, were four symbols worked into the lace: three small suns and a single star threaded in silver-gold fire.
One sun for Solarius, one for Solenne, one for Selene, and the star for me, Starveil’s daughter, Summer’s daughter, the sister who had bridged the distance between them.
Selene’s eyes lowered. “Mother approved the design before the Conclave.”
Solenne touched the nearest sun with one careful finger. “Of course she did.”
So much lived inside those four words that I wanted to throw something at the wall on her behalf. Of course Mother knew how to put grief into lace. Of course Mother knew how to honor the children she had divided and lost and shaped and wounded. Of course she could make beauty out of pain and still not have prevented the pain in the first place. That was Mother’s whole cursed talent.
The seam-mage adjusted the pinned fabric at my shoulder. “Your Highness, if you turn slightly?” I turned, because apparently my body still responded to instructions even while my brain was busy gnawing on three generations of maternal damage. Cassie’s gaze tracked every pin. Selene watched Solenne touch the veil. Solenne watched Mother not wake. And Tharion watched the door like he could threaten fate if it came through with bad news. Which, because fate was a tacky little parasite with timing issues, it did.
A guard knocked once and entered with a sealed folio against his chest. He bowed to Selene first, then to me, then Tharion. “Your Graces,” he said. “Your Highnesses. General. The Solar has confirmed the docket for tomorrow.” I went cold. Selene’s face changed before mine did, not with surprise but with recognition. She had known this was coming, maybe not the exact hour but the shape of it. Tharion held out his hand. The guard gave him the folio. I stepped off the fitting platform before the tailor could stop me. A pin tugged at the half-formed sleeve, and Cassie caught the fabric before it tore. “Mira,” she warned softly.
“I know, I know.” I held still with all the grace of a feral cat being asked to respect upholstery. The seam-mage carefully unfastened the loose panel while Tharion broke the seal. His eyes moved over the page. No one breathed loudly.
Then he looked at Selene and said, “Cassian’s sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow at second bell.” The name hit the room like a stain. Not Maelion’s son anymore. Not Sunspire’s heir. Not Lord anything. Cassian. Stripped traitor. Brother who had made children afraid. Son who had turned rot into treason. The man Kael had denied a dramatic death because living without story would hurt him more.
My fire stirred under my ribs, low and unpleasant. Cassie felt it. Her hand slid to my back, palm warm between my shoulder blades. Not restraining. Present. Selene’s voice was very quiet. “Tomorrow.”
“The Solar confirms the charges and custodial status,” Tharion said. “Formal judgment must be issued by the High Lady’s line in Seara’s incapacity.”
My stomach dropped in a way that had nothing to do with pregnancy. Selene looked at me. I looked at her. Absolutely not, I thought. The universe, which had never respected my boundaries, smiled with all its teeth. Tharion folded the folio closed. “Neither of you has been formally named heir. That does not remove obligation. You are both princesses of Summer, both duchesses, both recognized in the line of succession, and in the High Lady’s incapacity, the court requires her blood to sit in judgment.”
“Her blood,” I repeated, because sometimes my mouth liked to handle the first stage of panic without consulting me.
Tharion’s eyes softened by a fraction. “Yes.”
Selene did not move. Of course she did not. Selene had probably been born knowing how to receive awful responsibilities without blinking. I, on the other hand, had been born with a deep commitment to blinking, swearing, and occasionally setting things on fire. “Selene can do it,” I said.
Selene looked at me. I hated myself a little immediately. Not because it was untrue. Selene could do it. Selene could sit on a throne made of knives and make everyone thank her for the posture lesson. But that was not the point, and I knew it.
Tharion did not scold me. Somehow that made it worse. “The court will not accept only Selene,” he said. “Not after the Conclave. Not after Starveil’s recognition. Not after Cassian’s crimes touched your people, your bloodsworn, and the children rescued under your banner.”
My people. My bloodsworn. My banner. Each phrase landed like a stone placed carefully in my arms. “I don’t know how to hold court,” I said.
Selene’s expression finally cracked. Not much. Enough. “Neither did I, the first time Mother made me sit beside her.”
“That is not comforting.”
“No,” she said. “It is true.”
Solenne stepped away from the bed, her gaze moving between us. “Then you hold it together.”
I stared at her. “That sounds suspiciously like advice from someone who has been prepared for sovereignty since infancy.”
“It is,” Solenne said. “Would you prefer advice from someone unqualified?”
“Yes. It would be less annoying.”
Her mouth twitched. “You sit because the law requires blood. You listen because justice requires more than blood. You judge because no one else gets to carry the consequence for you. You do not have to enjoy it.”
I looked at Selene. She looked so tired. Not visibly, not in any way the tailors or healers would read, but I saw it then because I was finally standing close enough to stop using my own panic as a curtain. Selene was preparing to marry without Mother, to hold Summer together without Mother, to receive Solenne into a sisterhood Mother had broken open too late, and now to sit in judgment over a traitor from one of Summer’s oldest houses because Mother could not. And I had just tried to hand her the whole blade because I was afraid of cutting myself.
I swallowed. Cassie’s hand pressed once against my back. My wife did not tell me what to do. She did not need to. She had an annoyingly effective habit of believing I was better than my first instinct and then standing there until I caught up. “Fine,” I said, voice rough. “We do it together. I suppose it’s time I put on my big-girl panties and start acting like the queen the smallfolk decided I was three years ago.”
Selene’s eyes softened. “Mira—”
“No, don’t make that face. I will become emotionally unstable and then someone will pin this dress wrong.” I pointed at the fabric because deflection was a family heirloom too, probably stored in Mother’s evil study between generational trauma and diplomatic seals. “We do it together. We sit in Mother’s place. We hear whatever legal horror show the Solar has prepared. We sentence Cassian. Then you get married, because apparently this family has decided pacing is for cowards.”
A tear slipped down Selene’s cheek, just one. It shocked me more than if the windows had shattered. She wiped it away almost immediately, but we all saw it. Solenne saw it. Tharion saw it. Cassie saw it. Mother, maybe, if the healer was right and some part of her was still finding her way back through the dark. Selene laughed once, softly, with no humor in it. “I wanted her to be there.”
“I know,” I said.
“I wanted her to see it.”
“I know.”
“I am furious with her,” Selene whispered.
“Good,” Solenne said.
Selene looked at her. Solenne lifted her chin, daylight-bright and mercilessly kind. “You are allowed. Wanting her there does not make the anger disloyal. Anger does not make the wanting weak.” Selene closed her eyes.
I stepped out of the half-pinned gown carefully this time, because apparently growth meant not destroying expensive fabric during emotional revelations. The tailor helped me without speaking. Smart woman. Then I crossed to Selene and took her hand. It was cold. That felt wrong. Selene should not be cold. She was Summer and Day, gold and grace, the sister who always knew what to say when I was too much of a disaster to be left unsupervised. I held tighter. “She would be insufferable,” I said.
Selene opened her eyes. “At the wedding,” I continued, because once my mouth found a cliff it liked to sprint. “She would be proud and smug and pretending she wasn’t either. She would glare at Ryven just enough to make him prove he has a spine, then approve of him more for not flinching. She would criticize the veil while secretly remembering every stitch. She would tell you to stand straight even though you already have better posture than most architecture.” Selene’s lips trembled. “And tomorrow,” I said, quieter, “she would sit that court like judgment was invented because she was bored one afternoon. But she can’t. So we will.”
Solenne came to Selene’s other side and took her free hand. For a second, the three of us stood there beside Mother’s bed: the daughter raised in Summer, the daughter raised in Day, and the daughter raised between worlds like someone had dropped a match into a library and called it family planning. Three sisters. Not cleanly. Not easily. Not with the missing years returned or the wounds politely folded away. But there.
Cassie stood just behind me, close enough that I could feel her. Tharion looked away toward the window, giving us privacy in the only way he knew how: by guarding the room harder.
Selene breathed in, then out. “Heart Witness,” she said to me, her voice still fragile around the edges.
I groaned. “Do you have to say it like that?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
“Blood Witness,” she said to Solenne.
Solenne’s fingers tightened around hers. “Yes.”
Selene looked at Mother. “And tomorrow,” she said, “we hold court.” The words settled over us, not like victory but like weight, like duty, like the first door of Act II opening whether any of us were ready or not.
I looked down at Mother’s hand, lying still against the coverlet. Her fingers were long, elegant, warm when I touched them. Hands that had signed treaties. Hands that had held crowns. Hands that had arranged lives like pieces on a board and still, somehow, thrown themselves between me and death when the board caught fire.
I hated her. I loved her. I needed her to wake up. “Mom,” I said, before I could talk myself into something safer. The word made Tharion go still. Selene’s eyes found mine. Even Solenne’s breath caught, as if she understood instinctively that this name was not the one courts used. Not Mother. Not High Lady. Not Iron Crown. Just the childish, human, aching little word that I had spent years sharpening my teeth around because wanting her had always felt like handing her another weapon. I leaned closer. “Selene is getting married,” I said. “Solenne is here. Tharion is being terrifying at furniture again. Cassie is threatening tailors with her aura. I am apparently standing as Heart Witness, which sounds fake, but everyone is taking it seriously, so I’m trapped.” Cassie made a quiet, watery sound behind me. I kept my eyes on Mother. “And tomorrow, Selene and I have to sit in your place and sentence Cassian. Which is rude. I would like to file a complaint. Preferably with you. Awake. Being unbearable.”
Nothing. The room held its breath. My own came too fast. I pressed my thumb against Mother’s knuckles. “You’re missing too much.” Still nothing.
Hope was humiliating. It made a fool of the body before the mind could stop it. It made every tiny shift of light into a miracle, every breath into a message, every silence into a punishment.
Then Mother’s smallest finger twitched against mine.
Barely.
So slight I might have imagined it if Cassie had not gone utterly still behind me, if Selene had not made a broken sound, if Solenne had not clapped one hand over her mouth, if Tharion had not crossed half the room in three strides.
The healer moved quickly to the bedside, calm but alert, placing two fingers at Mother’s wrist, then hovering a palm over her sternum. Golden light spread beneath her hand, soft and careful.
“Do not force her,” the healer warned before any of us could speak. “Do not crowd. Let the response pass naturally.”
Naturally.
As if any of this was natural.
I stared at Mother’s hand.
Her finger did not move again.
The healer watched the light, then exhaled. “A response. Stronger than yesterday.”
Selene was crying silently now. Solenne still had one hand pressed to her mouth. Tharion looked like someone had driven a sword between his ribs and called it mercy.
I wanted to be relieved. I was. I also wanted to shake Mother until she opened her eyes and told me to stop being dramatic. Cassie’s arms came around me from behind, careful of the dress pins still clinging to my underlayer, careful of my stomach, careful of every place I was coming apart. I leaned back into her because pride was useless and she was warm and if I did not let her hold me, I might start screaming.
“Soon,” Cassie whispered against my hair. I closed my eyes. Soon was still cruel, but for the first time, it did not sound empty.
Across the bed, Selene reached for Solenne again, and Solenne took her hand. Tharion stood over Mother like he could guard the path back to her body by force of will alone. The tailors remained frozen near the wall, holding starlit fabric and wedding pins and all the ridiculous machinery of a life that kept moving even when the people inside it wanted time to stop.
Tomorrow, Selene and I would hold court. Soon, my sister would marry without our mother awake to witness it. Somewhere beyond this room, Summer was waiting to see whether Seara’s daughters could stand in the space she had left. I pressed my hand over Cassie’s where it rested low and protective against me. Then I looked at Mother’s face and let the anger, love, fear, and hope all sit in my chest together, ugly and crowded and alive. “You better wake up,” I whispered.
Mother did not answer, but her hand stayed warm under mine, and for one fragile, terrible moment, that had to be enough.