Mom looked like she was going to die again, which was a rude thing for a woman to do at her daughter’s wedding. Not actually die. Probably. Maybe. Gods, I hated that my brain had decided probably was an acceptable word to pair with my mother’s continued existence. The garden still roared behind us, all applause and flame-bells and courtly celebration because apparently five courts needed several extra seconds to notice when the bride’s newly conscious mother nearly folded like badly enchanted parchment. I noticed. Selene noticed. Solenne noticed. Lior looked like someone had taken the sun out of his chest with a spoon and left him standing there through stubbornness alone.
Mom’s knees buckled once, and the healer at her left caught her around the waist before she could hit the stone. The guards tightened around her in the same breath, but I was already moving, one hand instinctively going to my stomach before I remembered that sprinting in a witness gown while pregnant and surrounded by five courts was probably how people got put on supervised activity restrictions by overprotective wives. Cassie was beside me before the thought finished, of course she was, and when I snapped, “I’m fine,” because that was apparently what my mouth did whenever I was absolutely not fine, she did not even bother dignifying that with words. Her hand hovered near my back, not touching, not stopping me, just close enough that if I tripped over my own dress, she could catch me before I made pregnancy into a diplomatic incident. Very thoughtful. Deeply annoying. I would have appreciated it more if my chest were not trying to split open.
Selene reached Mom first, which was right. Horrible, aching, obvious, but right. Selene was the bride. Selene had just stood in front of five courts and said vows that made even Thornwild Briarheart look like he was having feelings in public, which I assumed was illegal in at least three courts. Selene had chosen Ryven with Mom standing at the edge of the garden like a ghost who had decided death was poor timing. Selene deserved the first touch, the first look, the first breath of whatever Mom had forced herself awake to give, so I stopped one step short even though it physically hurt.
Selene took Mom’s hand like she was afraid it might disappear if she held too hard. The blood-witness cut across her palm glowed faintly gold where Solenne had opened it during the ritual, and Mom’s fingers curled around hers with a weakness that made my throat close. “Finished?” Mom whispered.
Selene laughed once, and it broke before it became sound. “Yes.”
Mom’s mouth curved by a fraction. “Good.”
That one word nearly did more damage than the entire vow ceremony. Selene bowed her head over Mom’s hand. Not a court bow. Not a princess bow. Something smaller and more devastating. A daughter folding toward the mother she had spent all morning pretending not to need. The garden noise finally dimmed behind us as people realized the ceremony had become something no court etiquette manual had a clean category for. Good. Let them be confused. Let every noble in silk and jewelry sit there with their mouths shut for once and learn that even High Ladies could bleed their children’s hearts open by showing up late and alive.
“You should not have come,” Selene said.
Mom’s eyes sharpened, weak as she was. “It was your wedding.”
“Exactly.”
“I did not miss it.”
“You nearly collapsed in front of everyone.”
“I waited until after the bond was witnessed.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It is efficient.”
Oh, good. Mom was awake enough to be impossible. Selene made a sound I had never heard from her before, half laugh and half sob, full of all the things she had not allowed herself to be when she walked down the aisle with Lior, stood under the arch, and spoke as if every word had been carved from her own bones. Her shoulders trembled once, barely visible beneath the fall of bridal silk, and I looked away for half a second because watching Selene crack felt like seeing a marble statue breathe blood. Then I looked back because she was my sister and I would rather have chewed glass than leave her alone in it.
Mom saw the tremor too. Her fingers tightened around Selene’s. “You looked like yourself.”
Selene went still, not because the words were dramatic. They were not. Mom was too weak for dramatic, too stripped down, too brutally economical. But Lior had said the same thing earlier, in the dressing pavilion, and I watched the words land in Selene’s face with the terrible symmetry of both her parents recognizing her on the same day. Not useful. Not perfect. Not arranged. Herself. Selene’s lips parted, but nothing came out.
Mom’s gaze softened, and that was almost worse. “Happy?” she asked.
Selene closed her eyes, and the entire world seemed to wait. “Yes,” Selene whispered, and the word sounded like it cost her more courage than the vows.
Mom nodded once, as if that was the answer she had crawled out of death’s foyer to hear. “Then I was right to come.”
“You are insufferable,” Selene said, voice wrecked.
“I know.”
The healer on Mom’s right shifted, face pale with professional terror. “High Lady, we need to move you now.”
Mom’s expression suggested she had remembered healers existed and found the information disappointing. “In a moment.”
“No,” Selene said.
Mom blinked at her, and Selene straightened, even with tears standing in her eyes, even with her wedding veil trembling against her shoulders, sounding exactly like the woman who had sat beside me in the Solar and helped sentence Cassian to a vault instead of letting the court turn execution into an easy story. “Now. You came. You saw. You terrorized every healer in Emberhall. You are done standing.”
Mom looked at her daughter for one long, exhausted second. Then, miracle of miracles, she obeyed. Sort of. “Not carried,” Mom rasped as the healers adjusted their hold.
Selene’s eyes narrowed. “You are barely standing.”
“I said not carried.”
“Mom,” I said, because apparently I had inherited my worst timing from someone.
Mom’s gaze flicked to me, and my lungs forgot their job. Her eyes were open. Really open. Not the faint twitch of fingers, not the terrible stillness of healing sleep, not the almost of recovery that made hope feel like a knife held too close to the throat. Open. Amber-fire and exhausted and alive and looking at me. There were too many things in my chest. Too many. They shoved against each other until I could not tell which one was anger, which was relief, which was love, which was the old stupid child part of me that wanted to climb into her lap and demand she never scare me again. Cassie’s fingers brushed my back. Just once. Enough.
“You are going to let them help you,” I said, and my voice only cracked on the last word, which I felt was extremely mature of me.
Mom’s mouth almost smiled. “Bossy.”
“I learned from the worst.”
Selene made a tiny sound. Solenne did too. Mom’s eyes warmed, and the expression went through me like flame finding dry paper. Then Mom’s gaze moved past me to Solenne, and I stepped aside before anyone had to ask. It was not that I wanted to. I did not. I wanted to glue myself to Mom with both hands and possibly several legal decrees. But this was not only mine. That was the awful thing about families made from secrets and bargains and centuries of bad decisions. Every wound had siblings.
Solenne stood very still in her Day Court gold, witness-blade still in one hand, the other curled against the side of her gown as if she had forgotten she possessed fingers. She looked radiant and ruined, like sunlight held behind glass while someone decided whether it deserved to be let out. Mom looked at her. For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then Solenne stepped forward. “Mother,” she said. The word was controlled. Perfect. Day Court precise. It shook anyway.
Mom’s face changed. Not much. She did not have strength for much. But grief moved through her with such clear force that I felt my own anger stumble. I had been angry at Mom for a thousand things. For me. For Selene. For the lies. For the way she had built cages and called them protection when she was afraid. For every time she had made the right political move and the wrong mothering one. But Solenne’s wound was different. Older. Cleaner in some ways, uglier in others. Mom had not raised her. Lior had. Day had. Distance had. Silence had. And now Solenne stood beside the wedding arch as her mother nearly collapsed in front of a chair she had refused to turn into a memorial.
“I am sorry,” Mom said.
No court phrase. No mitigation. No explanation.
Solenne’s composure cracked. I actually saw it happen, a tiny fracture around the mouth, then the eyes, then the whole careful shape of her face. “I know.”
Mom looked pained. “Not enough.”
“No,” Solenne said, and the honesty sliced through all of us. “Not enough.”
Selene inhaled sharply. I did too. The healers went very still, probably because they had the survival instincts of people who understood not to interrupt royal family trauma unless blood was actively leaving someone’s body. Mom did not flinch. Maybe because she could not. Maybe because she knew she deserved the hit. “No,” she agreed. “Not enough.”
Solenne stared at her. Her eyes glittered gold-bright, but the tears did not fall. Day Court princesses probably learned that sunlight looked better than tears in public. I hated that for her. I hated that I recognized it. “I wanted to hate you longer,” Solenne said quietly.
Mom’s mouth trembled. Barely. “You may.”
“That is not helpful.”
“I am out of practice.”
That broke something. Solenne laughed, one hard, broken sound, and then she stepped in and took Mom’s other hand. The witness-blade hung uselessly from her fingers until one of the attendants, moving like someone approaching a wounded animal, carefully took it from her. Solenne did not seem to notice. She bent over Mom’s hand and pressed her forehead to it. Mom closed her eyes, and for one second, she looked old. Not ancient. Not immortal. Not High Lady of Eternal Summer. Just old in the way grief made people old when it returned with interest.
“I would have come sooner if I had known how,” Mom whispered.
Solenne’s shoulders shook once. “I know.”
“I should have known anyway.”
“Yes.”
Mom nodded. “Yes.”
I had to look at the ground because the alternative was making a noise in front of the entire gathered court, and I was already pushing my daily limit of emotionally humiliating public behavior. The healers tried again. This time Selene and Solenne moved with them, each holding one side of Mom as if the entire world had narrowed to the question of keeping her upright. I followed because there was no universe in which I did not follow. Cassie fell in beside me, close enough for her sleeve to brush mine. Ryven appeared near Selene’s back but did not touch her. Good. Smart storm man. Lior moved on Mom’s other side, every line of him screaming restraint so loudly I could practically hear it in three languages.
“Private route,” Tharion ordered, already clearing the aisle with a look that suggested anyone slow to move would become a tactical example.
The court parted, because of course it did. Mom had nearly died, returned, witnessed a wedding, and was now being escorted out by three daughters, one mate, two consorts-in-everything-but-position, and enough armed people to invade a minor kingdom. Even Thornspire had the sense not to make a sound. Small miracles everywhere.
We moved through the side path behind the wedding garden, past flame-lily arches and orange trees heavy with fruit. The heat followed us, rich and golden, but the corridor beyond the garden was quieter, protected by heavy Summer wards that hummed under my skin. The applause faded behind us into a muffled storm. Mom’s breathing was the loudest sound in the world. Not loud, actually. Thin. Uneven. But my entire body tuned itself to it. Every hitch became catastrophe. Every exhale became a bargain I had not consented to make.
The baby shifted low in my belly, a soft thrum of pressure and warmth. Great. Perfect. My daughter had also decided to participate in family panic. I pressed a hand to my stomach. Cassie saw. Obviously. Her face sharpened, but she only asked, “Pain?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“Not more than usual.”
“That is not an answer I like.”
“I’ll file your complaint with the department of terrible biological timing.”
“You are not funny.”
“I’m a little funny.”
“You are a little pregnant and walking too fast.”
“Cassie.”
Her mouth shut. Not because she agreed. Because she heard the edge in my voice and knew this was not the moment to turn love into a leash. She stayed beside me anyway, a shadow wrapped in white-and-black formalwear, ready to catch me if my body betrayed me. I loved her so much I almost resented her for it.
We reached Mom’s chamber through a private passage behind the receiving wing. It was not the main healing room she had occupied before, thank gods. Someone had moved quickly. Of course someone had. Emberhall functioned best when disaster gave it clear instructions. The room smelled of clean smoke, stargazer bloom, cooling herbs, and the faint metallic bite of healing wards. Curtains had been drawn against the worst of the sunlight, leaving everything amber-soft. A broad bed waited beneath a canopy of pale crimson silk, with ward-glyphs glowing around the carved frame. Mom looked at it like it had insulted her ancestors. “No,” she said, and Selene’s expression went lethal.
“Do not,” I warned Mom.
She looked at me. “Do not what?”
“High Lady your way out of lying down.”
Solenne’s voice came from the other side, bright and merciless. “She is correct.”
Mom looked betrayed. “All of you?”
“All of us,” Selene said.
“Lior,” Mom said, and oh, that was unfair.
His name in her mouth changed the room. Not dramatically. No glowing bond, no thunder, no romance-novel nonsense that would have made me leave the room on principle. But something opened between them. A tension I had felt before and not understood properly because I had been too busy being traumatized, furious, or sixteen. Lior stepped forward as if the sound had pulled him by the heart. Then he stopped because Selene was still holding Mom’s hand, because Solenne was still on Mom’s other side, because I was standing there with my own hand over my stomach and my entire soul trying to climb out through my throat. He stopped because he loved her enough not to make her daughters fight him for the first moment. Oh. Oh, hell. That was worse than if he had been possessive. Mom’s face softened when he stopped. Just a little. Just enough. “Traitor,” she whispered.
His eyes shone like sunlight held too long behind glass. “Always, when necessary.”
Selene looked between them, and something in her expression shifted. She knew. Of course she knew. Selene knew everything politely devastating at least six seconds before the rest of us. “You can have him after you lie down,” Selene said.
Mom stared at her. I had to bite my cheek. Solenne turned her face away, failing to hide a smile. Lior looked briefly, magnificently helpless. Mom allowed herself to be maneuvered onto the bed with the bitter dignity of a queen losing a negotiation to her own children. The healers descended immediately, all soft voices and glowing hands, checking pulse, breath, ward response, magical exhaustion, whatever terrible internal metric measured how much stubbornness a body could survive before collapsing out of protest.
Selene did not let go of Mom’s hand until the head healer looked at her and said, very carefully, “Your Highness, I need access to her left side.” Selene’s fingers tightened, and Mom noticed.
“Selene,” she said. The room quieted again, and Selene looked at her. “You are married.”
Selene swallowed. “Yes.”
“I saw.”
“I know.”
Mom’s eyes moved over her face, and for once she did not look like she was cataloguing posture, crown angle, political consequence, emotional risk, and seventeen ways to turn all of it into strategy. She looked like a mother looking at her daughter in bridal silk after almost missing the only part that mattered. “You chose well,” Mom whispered.
Selene’s face crumpled. Not fully. Selene did not crumple fully. She had been raised by the same woman currently undoing her with three-word sentences. But the crack was there, bright and painful and impossible to look away from. “He chose me back,” Selene said, and her voice was so small that I wanted to kill every court that had ever made that sound surprising.
Mom’s eyes filled. For one insane second, I thought she might apologize for everything. For the arrangement, for the pressure, for the way Selene had been trained into beauty and obedience and then expected to pretend that was the same as being safe. But Mom did not have the strength for everything, and maybe everything would have ruined the one thing Selene actually needed right now. “I know,” Mom said. “I heard him.”
Selene bowed over Mom’s hand and pressed her forehead against it. “I wanted you there.”
“I know.”
“I was angry that I wanted it.”
Mom’s fingers moved against hers. Weak. Careful. “So was I.”
Selene looked up. Mom’s mouth trembled at the edge. “That I wanted to be there. That my body would not obey me. That I had spent so many years teaching you how to stand without me that I nearly made you do it on your wedding day.”
Well. Great. Fantastic. Apparently my heart was not done being turned into soup. Selene made a sound that belonged nowhere near court record and leaned down far enough that Mom could touch her cheek. Mom’s hand shook badly. Selene covered it with her own and held it there.
“You were there,” Selene said.
“Barely.”
“You were there.”
Mom closed her eyes. “Yes.”
Solenne waited. That was the part that hurt next. She stood perfectly still beside the bed, sunlight and restraint and old abandonment, letting Selene have the first wound because it was Selene’s wedding day and Solenne was the kind of woman who understood timing even when it cost her. But Mom’s eyes opened and found her anyway. “Solenne,” Mom said.
Solenne’s breath caught. I saw her try to smile and fail. “Mother.”
Mom looked at her for a long moment, and there was no way to make that look not devastating. All those years that should have existed between them crowded into the room. First steps. Lessons. Bad dreams. Birthdays. Arguments. Ordinary breakfasts. Every tiny nothing that became family only after it was repeated often enough to feel guaranteed. Gone. Gone because courts had made choices and adults had survived them by pretending the children would be fine.
“I should have come for you,” Mom said.
Solenne’s face went very still. The head healer looked like she wanted to intervene and then remembered she enjoyed living.
Solenne’s hand lifted to her own throat, then dropped. “I had Father.”
“Yes.”
“And Day.”
“Yes.”
“And I was loved.”
Mom’s eyes softened in pain. “I know.”
“That does not make it not abandonment.”
“No.”
The honesty hit like a door opening in a room everyone had pretended was only a wall. Solenne’s lips parted. For a second, I thought she might step back. Instead, she stepped closer. “You are very difficult to forgive,” Solenne said.
Mom’s mouth curved, tired and sad. “I have been told.”
“By whom?”
“Your sister.”
“Which one?”
“Yes,” Mom said.
A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it, wet and awful and badly timed. Selene made a sound that might have been a laugh too. Solenne stared at Mom as if she had been struck, and then she folded forward and took Mom’s hand. “I wanted you,” Solenne whispered.
Mom’s face broke. There. That was the thing. Not fully. Not loudly. But enough that the High Lady fell away and only Seara remained, weak and pale and wrecked by the daughter she had not raised. “I know,” Mom said. “I am sorry.”
Solenne bent over her hand the way Selene had and cried silently, because apparently all of us had inherited terrible emotional habits from at least three different courts. Mom tried to lift her hand to Solenne’s hair, but she could not quite manage it. Selene reached over and helped her. That undid me more than I expected. Selene helping Mom comfort Solenne. Solenne letting her. Mom letting herself need help to mother the daughter she had failed. My brain tried to make a joke about family bonding exercises and immediately got escorted out of the room by whatever part of me still had standards.
Then Mom looked at me. Last. I knew why. I hated that I knew why. Selene first because it was her wedding day. Solenne second because Mom had missed too much and knew it. Me last because Mom had almost died saving me, and then I had done the impossible to save her. Or ascended. Or exploded. Or become a court’s problem in a new and exciting way. The terminology remained annoying, especially when no one had the courtesy to provide a handbook.
Mom’s gaze moved over me slowly: my Heart Witness gown, my escaped hair, the hand I had not managed to remove from my stomach, Cassie standing just behind me with murder tucked neatly into every line of her body, and the starlit pressure under my skin that had not gone away since Starveil decided subtlety was for other courts. Her eyes sharpened. Oh, no. Nope. I knew that look. That was the look Mom got when she saw too much and was already deciding which parts of it she was going to say out loud despite everyone’s emotional stability being one stern breeze from collapse. “Mira,” she whispered.
My name in her voice hit different when she was lying in a bed she had nearly collapsed into. Less command. More ache. I stepped forward because not stepping forward would have been childish, and I was about to be a mother, which meant I was only allowed to be childish in carefully selected emergencies. “Hi,” I said. Brilliant. Poetic. Historically significant.
Mom’s mouth twitched. “Hi.”
That was worse. My eyes burned immediately. “You are not allowed to do that.”
“Say hello?”
“Be funny while looking like death reheated.”
Selene made a small offended sound. Solenne wiped at her face with one hand and somehow managed to look both wrecked and disapproving. Mom actually smiled. Barely. Enough. “Come here,” she said.
I did. I sat on the edge of the bed because my knees had filed a formal protest, and Cassie made a movement behind me like she had considered stopping me, calculated the emotional hazard, and decided the bed could keep its life if it behaved. Her restraint was touching. Also suspicious. Cassie’s restraint usually meant she had a backup plan with teeth.
Mom reached for me, her hand shaking. I took it before she had to try too hard. Her skin was warm. Too warm in some places, too cool in others. Real. Gods, real. I stared at our joined hands and tried very hard not to remember what it had felt like to see her fall at the Conclave. To feel the world narrow to Seara dying, Naomi bleeding, Kess wrong, Taryx smiling, and the terrible certainty that if I did not become something impossible, everyone I loved would be lost.
“You died,” Mom said quietly.
I looked up. Selene and Solenne went still. “Technically,” I said, because apparently I had a medical death wish and a sarcasm reflex.
Cassie made a sound behind me. Mom’s fingers tightened weakly. “Mira.”
That was all it took. My face crumpled like wet paper. Rude. Extremely rude. I had not authorized that. “I didn’t mean to,” I said, which was possibly the stupidest thing I had ever said and I had once told Cassie her cheekbones were a public health hazard.
Mom’s eyes filled. “I know.”
“I just... there wasn’t time, and you were down, and Naomi was... Kess was wrong, and Taryx had the brand, and I couldn’t move, and then I could, and I didn’t think, I just...” The words tangled. My chest hurt. The baby shifted under my hand, small and alive and completely uninterested in respecting narrative pacing. “I couldn’t let him take you.”
Mom looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before. Not pride. Not exactly. Grief wearing pride’s crown, maybe. “You should not have had to save me,” she said.
“Well, you were busy being unconscious.”
“Mira.”
“Sorry.” I wiped at my face with my free hand. “No, I’m not. That was terrifying, and I’m still mad at you, and I love you, and you scared the absolute shit out of me, and you are not allowed to do that again.”
Mom closed her eyes for one breath. When she opened them, her gaze dropped to my stomach, and the whole room seemed to notice the movement. Not because Mom had been subtle. Mom was never subtle when subtlety would inconvenience her. But because every person in that room knew exactly what I had been trying not to talk about. I had almost died. Mom had almost died. Selene had just gotten married. Solenne had just called our mother Mother with a voice that sounded like sunlight breaking. Lior was sitting three feet away, silent and shattered around a bond he had waited too long to touch properly. And under my palm, Lily moved again. Tiny. Alive. Insistent.
Mom inhaled. The sound was so small I almost missed it. Almost. But I had spent too many years trying to hear what Mom did not say, and this one was impossible not to hear. “She moved,” Mom whispered.
My throat closed. “Yeah,” I said. “She does that when everyone is being emotionally catastrophic.”
Mom’s gaze lifted to my face, and something in it cracked so cleanly that I forgot how to breathe. She was not looking at the High Lady of Starveil. Not at the daughter who had ascended. Not at the court problem. Not at the future political nightmare currently pretending she was functional on the edge of a bed. She was looking at her pregnant daughter. And she was looking at her first grandchild. “She is...” Mom stopped.
I waited, because if I said anything sarcastic right then, I was going to hate myself for it.
Mom’s fingers trembled in mine. “She is real.”
I laughed once, and it broke in the middle. “That is unfortunately the problem.”
Cassie moved behind me. Not closer exactly. She was already close enough that I could feel her chilled-vanilla-and-shadow presence against my back. But she changed. The air around her tightened, and I knew without looking that her eyes had gone sharp. Mom saw that too, of course she did. Even half-dead and propped in healing pillows, she could still smell a bonded mate having emotions from across a room. “Cassandra,” Mom said.
Cassie straightened. “High Lady.”
“Mira looks tired.”
Cassie blinked.
I stared at Mom. “Excuse me?”
Mom ignored me. “And pale.”
“I am standing right here. Well, sitting. Adjacent to standing in spirit.”
“Pregnancy has not improved your ability to lie.”
Cassie’s mouth twitched despite herself. “No.”
“Hey.”
Mom’s eyes slid back to me. “Sit properly.”
“I am sitting.”
“You are perching like the bed offended you.”
“It might have. This palace has been weird.”
“Move.”
“I’m pregnant, not obedient.”
Cassie’s hand touched my shoulder. Gently. Traitorously. I turned my head slowly. “Do not.”
Cassie looked down at me with the composed expression of a woman who had already committed treason and was willing to accept sentencing. “You are pale.”
“I am surrounded by people who keep saying devastating things while I am wearing formal shoes.”
“You are also exhausted.”
“Everyone here is exhausted.”
“You are carrying our daughter.”
The room went quiet. Not loudly. Quiet never happened loudly. But it landed. It spread from Cassie’s voice into the warded air, over the pillows, over Mom’s pale face, over Selene’s bridal silk and Solenne’s clenched fingers and Lior’s bowed head. Our daughter. Not my pregnancy. Not the baby. Not the court’s future. Not whatever language fae law would eventually drag out of a dusty archive and fling at us like a weapon. Our daughter.
Mom looked at Cassie then. Really looked at her. I braced for the court assessment. For the High Lady calculation. For some sharp, exhausted phrase about old magic, mating bonds, sire-right, protection, responsibility, anything that would make me want to bite through the bedframe. Instead, Mom’s eyes softened. “You said that easily,” she whispered.
Cassie’s throat moved. “Because it is true.”
Mom nodded once, slow and weak. “Good.”
Cassie did not answer. She could not, I think. Not immediately. Her hand stayed on my shoulder, and beneath all that ice-white control I felt the smallest tremor. Oh. Oh, hell. I reached up and covered Cassie’s hand with mine. Mom saw that too. Annoyingly alive, apparently. “And are you being unbearable?” Mom asked.
Cassie froze. I looked at Mom. Then at Cassie. Then back at Mom. A sunbeam could have broken through the ceiling and I would not have looked away from this gift. “I’m sorry,” I said reverently. “Could you repeat the question?”
Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “Firefly.”
“No, no. The High Lady is speaking. Let the dying woman have her small pleasures.”
“I am not dying,” Mom said.
“Then stop giving vintage ghost energy.”
Selene made a strangled sound. Mom ignored me with the dignity of a woman who had weaponized ignoring me for twenty years. Her gaze stayed on Cassie. “Are you being unbearable?”
Cassie’s jaw worked once. “I am being attentive.”
Mom hummed. It was a very Mom hum. Cassie’s posture grew even more formal, which was how I knew she had begun losing. “I monitor Mira’s condition.”
“Oh my gods.”
“She forgets to eat.”
“I deprioritize meals under stress. That is different.”
“She considers tea and spite a nutritional plan.”
Mom’s eyes moved to me. I looked away. “There were leaves involved.”
Cassie continued, merciless now that she had apparently decided betrayal was a full-time activity. “She walks too quickly. She stands too long. She says she is fine when she is clearly nauseous. She has tried to hide dizziness twice this week.”
“Once and a half.”
Cassie’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “Twice.”
Mom looked deeply unsurprised. “And the furniture?”
Cassie went very still. I turned slowly. “Cassie.”
“One chair.”
Selene pressed her lips together.
“It was unstable,” Cassie said.
“It was decorative.”
“It was structurally unserious.”
Solenne made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. Lior lifted his head enough to look mildly bewildered by the phrase structurally unserious, which was fair. Mom closed her eyes. For one terrible second, I thought we had pushed her too far. Then I realized she was laughing. Silently. Barely. But laughing. It was the kind of laugh that cost her. The healers noticed at once, their expressions turning sharp, but Mom lifted two weak fingers and dismissed their concern with the same imperious annoyance she had used on dukes, generals, daughters, and probably the concept of weather.
“She is carrying your child,” Mom said, opening her eyes again. “Your instincts are going to be ugly.”
Cassie’s expression shifted. “Ugly.”
“Old. Useful. Dangerous when indulged.” Mom’s voice thinned, but there was a teaching edge beneath it now. Not court instruction. Not punishment. Something older. More intimate. A mother who had lived long enough to understand the difference between love and the excuses people dressed love in. “The non-carrying mate often mistakes vigilance for competence. Doors become threats. Food becomes suspect. Every chair is inadequate. Every person too close. Every step taken without permission feels like insult.”
Cassie said nothing. Mom’s gaze held hers. “Fear will tell you control is care.”
The room went very still. Cassie’s hand was warm against mine now. Too warm for a woman made of shadows and winter-white fury. “I know,” Cassie said.
Mom watched her for one long breath. “Do you?”
Cassie looked at me. Not at my stomach. Not at the possible threats. Not at the door. Me. “I am trying,” she said.
My chest cracked open in the rudest possible way. Mom nodded faintly. “Good.”
“Not good,” Cassie said. “Necessary.”
Mom’s mouth twitched. “Also true.”
Then her expression sharpened. Not into judgment. Into recognition. “Cassie,” Mom said quietly, “you cannot protect Mira by making her smaller.”
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. I froze. Cassie froze harder. Mom’s gaze never left hers. “You cannot love the dangerous parts of her and spend every day trying to contain them.”
Cassie’s jaw tightened. “I am not trying to contain her.”
“No?” Mom asked gently.
Cassie opened her mouth. Closed it.
Mom waited. Gods, she was unfair when she did that. She could make silence feel like testimony. “You monitor her,” Mom continued. “You anticipate threats. You prepare for disasters before they happen. Those are not flaws. They are part of who you are. But Mira is not safe because she stays still.” My throat tightened. Mom looked at me briefly before returning her attention to Cassie. “She never has been.”
Cassie’s fingers flexed against mine.
“She survived because she moved,” Mom said. “Because she questioned things she should not have questioned. Because she ran toward problems everyone else avoided. Because she refused to accept limits that sensible people accepted.”
“Sensible people live longer,” Cassie muttered.
“Sometimes.”
The answer was so immediate that I almost laughed. Mom’s eyes softened. “But that is not who she is.”
Cassie looked away for the first time, toward the floor, toward the bed, anywhere but Mom. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you know it very well,” Mom said. “I think it terrifies you.”
Cassie went still. There it was. Not denial. Not anger. The truth. Mom saw it too.
“When you are afraid,” Mom continued, voice thin but steady, “you reach for certainty. Structure. Control. You look for the thing you can hold in place.”
Cassie’s throat moved.
“And Mira,” Mom said softly, “was never meant to be held in place.”
The room felt impossibly quiet. I couldn’t breathe, because Mom wasn’t talking about politics. Or power. Or Starveil. She was talking about me. The version of me that climbed walls she wasn’t supposed to climb. The version that chased mysteries and picked fights with fate and walked directly into impossible situations because someone had to. The version Cassie loved. The version Cassie feared losing. Mom’s gaze gentled. “If you ask her to become smaller so you can stop being afraid, you will hurt her.”
Cassie flinched. Actually flinched. My heart broke a little, because Mom wasn’t accusing her. And Cassie knew it.
“You cannot protect her by cutting away the pieces that make her herself.”
Cassie stared at me for a long moment. Long enough that I saw every terrible thing she wasn’t saying. The fear. The helplessness. The memory of watching me die. The memory of almost losing me. Again. And again. And again. When she finally spoke, her voice was rough. “I don’t want her smaller.”
Mom waited.
Cassie swallowed. “I want her alive.”
Oh. Oh, hell. The room vanished. Not literally. But everything else became background noise, because that was it. That was the wound underneath all of it. Not possessiveness. Not control. Fear. Raw and ugly and desperate. I turned toward her fully. Cassie’s eyes met mine. Unshielded. For once. “I know,” I whispered.
Something in her face cracked. Just a little. Mom watched both of us. Then she nodded. “As long as you remember those are not the same thing.”
Cassie closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she looked tired. Not physically. Soul-deep tired. “I am trying,” she said again.
This time it sounded less like a defense. More like a promise. Mom’s expression softened. “I know.”
I looked between them. “Absolutely not. You two do not get to bond over how difficult I am to keep alive.”
“You are difficult,” Cassie said.
“I am delightful.”
Mom’s eyes warmed. “You are both.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
“It was not a defense.”
“Wow.”
The baby moved again, and all three of us went silent. It was not dramatic. Lily was tiny. My body was still mostly mine, which was a sentence I had to tell myself several times a day because pregnancy was beautiful and horrifying and occasionally made me feel like I had been rented out to biology without adequate legal counsel. But the movement was clear under my palm and Cassie’s hand and, somehow, under Mom’s attention. Mom’s face changed. The teasing vanished. So did mine.
“She answered,” Mom whispered.
“She has opinions,” I said, because my voice had gone too soft and I hated being perceived.
Mom looked at me, then at my stomach again. “May I?”
Two words. Not a command. Not an assumption. Not a High Lady reaching for bloodline, future, heir, or miracle. A grandmother asking. I nodded because speaking would have been a mistake.
Mom’s hand shook badly when she lifted it. Cassie moved before I could, sliding one hand beneath Mom’s wrist to steady her. For half a second, they both froze. Cassie supporting Mom’s hand. Mom allowing it. Me sitting between them with my breath trapped somewhere in my ribs. Then Cassie guided Mom’s hand to the curve of my stomach. Barely. Carefully. Mom’s fingers rested over the fabric.
Lily moved.
Mom’s eyes filled.
Oh. No. No, that was absolutely not allowed. My mother did not get to look at my baby like that when I had spent months being terrified in ways I did not know how to name. She did not get to wake up and immediately find the exact place where I was weakest. She did not get to make me want her. Except she did. Because I did. I wanted my mom. Not the High Lady. Not the strategist. Not the woman who could teach me court survival while slicing my self-esteem into practical ribbons. My mom. I wanted her hand on my stomach and her voice telling me which parts of fear were normal and which parts were lying. I wanted her to explain pregnancy magic and birth rites and what to do when the baby cried and Cassie looked ready to declare war on sleep deprivation. I wanted her so badly that wanting became another thing to be ashamed of.
Mom’s fingers moved, weak and reverent. “Hello, little one.”
Lily kicked again. Harder this time. Cassie stopped breathing. I made a sound that did not belong to any known language. Mom laughed once. It broke immediately into tears.
“She heard you,” I whispered.
“She is strong.”
“She is dramatic.”
“She is yours.”
“And Cassie’s,” I said, fierce enough that the room felt it.
Mom looked at Cassie. “Yes. And Cassandra’s.”
Cassie’s face softened in a way that should have been private. The room saw it anyway. A ruinously tender thing, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but not before Mom caught it.
“She loves loudly,” Mom said.
Cassie’s mouth pressed into a line. “I do not.”
I stared at her. Selene stared at her. Solenne stared at her. Even Lior looked at her.
Cassie sighed. “Fine.”
Mom’s hand stayed on my stomach, light and trembling. “No one who loves Mira is quiet about it. Even when they think they are.”
My eyes burned again. “This feels targeted.”
“It is.”
“Rude.”
“True.”
“Both can be bad.”
Mom smiled. Then her expression shifted, not away from joy but deeper into it. Into the fear underneath. “She has a great many people waiting for her,” Mom whispered.
I looked down. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Lily had people waiting. People who loved her. People who would kill for her. People who would name her, protect her, claim her, bless her, interpret her, predict her, and decide what she meant before she could even open her eyes. Love was not simple when everyone loving you had power. I knew that better than anyone.
Mom’s gaze sharpened on my face. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The thing you are not saying.”
“I am saying plenty.”
“You are making noise near the fear.”
Cassie’s thumb brushed my knuckles. I swallowed. “I’m afraid.”
No one interrupted. Damn them.
“I am afraid all the time,” I said, staring at Mom’s hand on my stomach because that was easier than looking at her face. “Not cute afraid. Not brave afraid. Gross afraid. Bone-deep, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-check-if-I’m-still-pregnant afraid. I’m afraid of eating the wrong thing, moving wrong, using too much magic, not using enough magic. I’m afraid Starveil will decide she belongs to it before she belongs to herself. I’m afraid Summer will look at her and see bloodline. I’m afraid enemies will look at her and see leverage. I’m afraid birth is going to be awful and I’m going to hate parts of it and feel guilty, or love parts of it and become even more insufferable somehow.”
Cassie’s hand tightened around mine.
“I’m afraid I’ll be like you in the bad ways,” I said.
Mom went still.
“And not enough like you in the good ways.”
Her eyes filled again.
“I’m afraid I will need you,” I whispered, and there went the worst of it, dragged into the open and bleeding everywhere. “And you won’t be there.”
Silence took the room. Not court silence. Family silence. The kind with teeth marks in it. Mom stared at me for a long moment. Then she took the smallest breath.
“I was not there,” she said.
“No.”
“I should have been.”
“Yes.”
The answer came before I could make it less sharp. Mom accepted it. That made it worse.
“I cannot undo that.”
“I know.”
“I can be here now.”
I laughed, and it nearly broke into a sob. “You are currently under healer supervision after collapsing at a wedding.”
“I said now. I did not say impressively.”
That startled a real laugh out of me. Brief. Wet. Ugly. Mine. Mom’s fingers trembled against my stomach.
“When she will not sleep, ask me. When she cries and you cannot tell whether she is hungry, uncomfortable, overstimulated, furious at the indignity of having a body, or simply exercising her lungs like a future tyrant, ask me. When you are afraid you sound like me, ask me. When you are afraid you do not sound enough like me, ask me then too.”
My throat tightened.
“I may answer badly,” she added. “I have a long history of doing so.”
“That is not the reassurance structure most people use.”
“No.” Her mouth curved faintly. “But it has the virtue of being true.”
Cassie lowered her head, and for a second her forehead brushed my hair. Mom saw. Of course she did. “And when Cassandra becomes unbearable, tell me.”
Cassie lifted her head. “High Lady.”
“You are already unbearable.”
“I have been very restrained.”
Mom looked down at Cassie’s hand still supporting hers. “Yes. That is why I am only warning you.”
I smiled through tears. “I missed this.”
Mom’s gaze returned to me. “Being scolded?”
“Being able to ask.”
That undid her. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But her face changed, and for one terrifying second I thought we had finally reached the place where the High Lady could not follow. Then Mom’s hand slipped from my stomach to my hand, and she squeezed with what little strength she had.
“Ask,” she said.
Something ancient moved through the room then. Not visible. Not loud. Not even magic in the way most magic behaved. But Mom felt it, and I felt her feel it. The Veil around me, or Starveil in me, or whatever impossible thing had threaded itself through my bones when I ascended and apparently forgot to ask whether I had room in my schedule. Mom’s expression changed. She looked at me the way she had looked at Selene’s veil when she decided the star stayed. Like she had found a truth she had suspected and hated and loved all at once.
“Starveil is finally yours,” she whispered.
The room went quiet enough that I could hear my own pulse. My fingers tightened around hers. “What?”
Mom’s thumb brushed over my hand. “I can feel it.”
“Mom.”
“The Veil around you. The court under your skin.” Her gaze moved over my face, and a faint, exhausted smile touched her mouth. “You ascended.”
I swallowed. There were several answers available. Most of them involved panic. A few involved profanity. One involved asking whether this could maybe wait until after Selene’s reception, because apparently my life enjoyed stacking revelations like unstable furniture. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of options,” I said.
“No.” Mom’s smile faded into something softer. “You rarely do, when it matters.”
That hit too close. I looked down at her hand. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know.”
“Rude.”
“True.”
“Both can be bad.”
Mom’s smile returned for half a second. Then her gaze shifted past me to Selene. I saw it. I wish I had not. It was brief. A shadow under the exhaustion. A mother looking at one daughter after naming another truth. Sadness, sharp and hidden quickly, because Mom knew what I did not want to know and Selene probably already feared in some quiet chamber of herself: Starveil had chosen me. Summer had listened to me. The lines were moving. The future was rearranging itself in ways none of us were ready to say aloud. Mom would have to name an heir eventually, and some part of her believed it would be me.
My stomach turned. No. Absolutely not. This was Selene’s wedding day. We were not doing succession trauma over healing tea and bridal blood. I would bite someone. Probably destiny. Did destiny have ankles? I hoped so. Mom’s gaze returned to mine before Selene could catch too much of what had passed across her face. Maybe Selene caught it anyway. She was Selene. She caught silence professionally.
“Not today,” Mom whispered, so low I was not sure anyone else heard.
I did. I hated that I did. “Damn right not today,” I whispered back.
Mom’s eyes warmed.
A knock came at the outer door before I could make that everyone’s problem. The healers all looked ready to murder whoever stood on the other side. Valid. Relatable. But then Vaeris opened the door just enough to receive a murmur from someone outside, and her gaze moved to Selene. “Prince Ryven requests entry,” Vaeris said from the doorway.
Cassie, already beside me, snorted softly. “As if he was going to stay away.”
I laughed despite myself, wiping at my face with the back of my hand like that would help. It did not. I looked like a drowned raccoon in witness silk. Very royal.
Selene looked at Mom. “Do you want him to come in?”
Mom’s eyes closed briefly. When they opened, they moved first to Selene. “Your husband, yes.”
Selene’s cheeks colored. Oh. Oh, that was beautiful. I almost forgave the universe for five seconds.
Vaeris opened the door. Ryven entered like a man who had spent the last several minutes outside a room containing his new wife, his collapsed mother-in-law, a true mate waiting at a bedside, three emotionally devastated daughters, several healers, and enough family history to concuss a building, and had somehow chosen not to break the door down. Respectful. Unfairly attractive. Deeply suspicious levels of self-control.
He had removed nothing from the ceremony except the public mask. That was still mostly there, because courts did not fall off a person simply because a door closed, but his eyes went straight to Selene and stayed there. She stood at the side of the bed in bridal silk with a blood-mark across her palm, veil trailing over her shoulder, face pale from too much emotion and not enough time to process any of it. Lior sat at Mom’s bedside with her hand wrapped in both of his, looking like he would fight the sun itself if it tried to take her from him again. Cassie stood beside me with one hand still in mine. Solenne stood on Mom’s other side, bright and wrecked and trying to look like sunlight had never heard of tears.
Ryven stopped just inside the room. “Selene,” he said. One word. Soft. Hers.
Selene crossed to him and folded into his arms. Not dramatically. Not like she had collapsed. She simply stepped into the place he made for her, and he closed around her without swallowing her. One hand settled at her back. The other lifted carefully near her veil, stopping before he touched the delicate fall of gold silk, like even in a private room he wanted permission from the parts of her the ceremony had just made sacred. His face lowered to her hair. “I am sorry,” he murmured.
“For what?” Selene asked, voice muffled against him.
“That the world keeps asking you to be composed.”
She laughed. It turned into crying. Ryven held her through it, and the rest of us pretended not to watch while absolutely watching because privacy was a concept our family respected mostly in theory.
Mom watched too. Of course she did. She lay against the pillows, pale and half-swallowed by healing wards. Lior remained nearby, close enough that his attention never truly left her, but still giving her daughters the space they needed. Yet Mom’s eyes stayed on Selene and Ryven. Not calculating. Not measuring. Not deciding how their union affected Summer, Dusk, Day, Night, Spring, succession, military posture, or whatever other political horror usually lived in her head rent-free. She was just watching her daughter be held. That was somehow worse.
Selene eventually pulled back enough to look at Mom, though Ryven did not release her. He kept one hand at her waist, light and steady, not possession, not claim, just there if she wanted the shape of him behind her bones.
Mom’s mouth curved faintly. “You chose well.”
Ryven’s expression changed. Not pride. Not triumph. Not the court-trained satisfaction of a prince receiving approval from a High Lady whose opinion could still rearrange lives from a sickbed. Something quieter. Almost grief. “She chose me,” he said.
Selene’s face crumpled again, and I had to look at the ceiling because apparently my eyes were determined to flood Emberhall one emotional moment at a time.
Mom nodded once. “Good.”
Lior finally moved. His chair scraped softly against the floor. No one had paid much attention to him for the last several minutes. Not because he was easy to miss, because Lior had never been easy to miss, but because every conversation had kept pulling back toward Mom. Toward Selene and Ryven. Toward Solenne. Toward me and Cassie and Lily and all the fractures we were trying to hold together with our bare hands. Still, I noticed the moment he stood. His fingers lingered on the back of the chair for a second, knuckles white. Then he let go. He crossed the room without hurry. One step. Another. The healers shifted aside automatically.
Mom looked up before he reached the bed, like she had been waiting for it. The room changed. I had thought I understood mating bonds. I did not. Not really. I understood the theory. The court nonsense. The possessive insanity. The way people used the word mate to justify behavior that, frankly, should have resulted in being hit with furniture. I understood Cassie and me, which was its own aggressively specific category because nothing about us behaved politely enough to serve as a general case study. But Lior and Mom were something else. There was no grabbing. No dramatic declarations. No glowing thread visible between their chests. Lior simply sat at her bedside with her hand in his, and the air around them knew they had been separated too long. It knew. Like the room itself had become witness to a wound older than most of the people breathing in it.
Lior bowed over her hand, and his forehead touched her fingers. The sound he made was not a sob. Not quite. It was too controlled for that, too old and too restrained. But it was close enough that my own eyes burned again because apparently today my tear ducts had unionized. “Seara,” he whispered.
Mom closed her eyes. “You look terrible.”
A laugh broke out of him. It was ruined. Beautiful. Awful. “So do you,” he said.
“Liar.”
“No.” He lifted his head, and the grief in his face was almost unbearable. “Never about you.”
Mom’s expression folded inward. “That is also a lie.”
Lior flinched. She did not take it back. Good. Maybe not good. Maybe terrible. But true. “I know,” he said.
“I missed you,” Mom whispered, and that was it. That was the sentence that made Solenne cover her mouth, Selene press her face harder into Ryven’s shoulder, and me look directly at the wall because nope. No. Absolutely not. My emotional organs were closed for business.
Lior bent over her hand again. “I missed you every day.”
“You should have hated me.”
“I did. Inefficiently.”
Mom smiled. A real one this time. Exhausted, tiny, but real.
“Well,” I muttered mostly to Cassie, “that explains where Solenne gets the devastating sentence thing.”
Cassie’s hand stayed over mine. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
“Don’t encourage honesty. It’ll go to my head.”
Mom heard us. Half-dead and still nosy. “Mira.”
I looked at her. “Absolutely not.”
“I have not said anything yet.”
“You used the tone.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed faintly. “You do not know which tone.”
“I know all the tones. I was raised by them.”
“Reception,” Mom said.
The room collectively recoiled.
Selene pulled back from Ryven. “Absolutely not.”
Solenne said, “You cannot be serious.”
Cassie’s hand became a little more protective over mine. “Mira is not going anywhere she does not want to go.”
Mom’s gaze slid to her. “I know.”
Cassie blinked, which was satisfying.
Mom looked back at all of us, and the High Lady came through then. Faint, frayed, but still steel under silk. “There is a reception full of courts who just watched Selene and Ryven speak vows that made half of them reconsider their own marriages. If all of you vanish, the room becomes speculation. If the bride and groom do not return, the story becomes my collapse instead of their union.”
Selene’s face tightened. “I do not care about the story.”
“I know.” Mom’s voice softened. “That is why I am telling you to go.”
Selene’s eyes filled again.
Mom squeezed Lior’s hand, then looked at Ryven. “Take her back.”
Ryven bowed his head. “Only if she chooses.”
Mom’s mouth curved faintly. “Good answer.”
Selene looked at him, then at Mom. “I do not want to leave you.”
“You are not leaving me.” Mom’s gaze moved over all three of us. “You are going to your reception. You are going to eat something. You are going to let people congratulate you. You are going to dance if you have the strength, or sit like royalty if you do not. You are going to let this day be yours.”
Selene shook her head. “Mom—”
“No.” Mom’s voice was barely more than breath, and somehow it stopped her. “Do not give me the rest of it. I know. I know all of it. But I did not drag myself out of bed to ruin your wedding.”
“You did not ruin it,” Selene whispered.
Mom looked at her for a long second. “Then do not let my body try.”
That was such a Mom sentence I almost laughed and cried at the same time. Solenne bent and kissed Mom’s hand. “We will come back.”
“Yes.”
“Soon.”
“Yes.”
“You will still be here.”
Mom’s face softened. “Yes.”
Solenne nodded once, like she needed the answer to become law. Selene leaned down next. Mom touched her cheek again, weak but deliberate. “Married,” she whispered.
Selene’s mouth trembled. “Yes.”
“Happy?”
Selene glanced back at Ryven. He looked at her like the question had his whole life trapped inside it. “Yes,” she said.
Mom’s eyes warmed. “Then go.”
Selene kissed her forehead. That did it. I turned away and immediately ran into Cassie’s shoulder because apparently my spatial awareness had died of feelings.
“Careful,” Cassie murmured.
“I am full of grace.”
“You are full of tears.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
Mom’s gaze moved to me last again. “Mira.”
I looked at her. She was pale, exhausted, half-swallowed by pillows and healing wards, with Lior holding her hand like the world might try to steal her again if he loosened his fingers. But her eyes were clear. “You are sleeping while we are gone,” I said before she could say something devastating.
Mom’s mouth twitched. “Bossy.”
“Genetic.”
“Unfortunately.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No speeches. No dramatic exits. No making the healers hate their lives.”
“That last one may be unavoidable.”
“Mom.”
Her expression softened. I leaned down and hugged her carefully. Too carefully. Mom made a soft, irritated sound. “I am not porcelain.”
“You are currently giving antique teacup energy.”
“Mira.”
I tightened my arms by one careful degree. Her hand came up slowly, shaking, and touched my hair. That was all. That was enough to make me break quietly against her shoulder. “I love you,” I whispered, so low maybe only she heard.
Her fingers trembled once in my hair. “I know, stargazer.”
Right nickname. Worse ache. Then Cassie’s hand settled against my back, and I let her help me stand because if I stayed one second longer, I was going to refuse to leave like a reasonable adult and possibly chain myself to Mom’s bed.
At the door, Selene looked back. Mom lifted two fingers in the weakest, most imperious dismissal I had ever seen. “Go,” she said.
Selene laughed through tears. We went.
The corridor outside smelled of hot stone, healing smoke, and distant orange blossom. The reception waited somewhere beyond the private wing, full of people, music, politics, and the version of joy that could survive being witnessed by courts. I was not ready. Selene was not ready. Solenne was definitely not ready. Cassie’s hand found mine. Ryven’s hand found Selene’s. Solenne walked between us like sunlight holding itself upright out of spite. I looked at Selene. Her veil was slightly crooked now. Mira the Heart Witness, terror of fabric and emotional support disasters, could not allow that.
“Wait,” I said.
Selene turned toward me, eyes red. “Mira.”
“Nope.” I stepped in front of her and adjusted the veil with hands that only shook a little. “You are not entering your reception with grief veil.”
“Grief veil?”
“It’s a technical term.”
“It is not.”
“It is now.” I smoothed the silk near her temple, the same place I had fixed earlier. “There. Bride again.”
Selene looked at me. For one second, she was not composed at all. Then she smiled. Small. Real. Hers. “Thank you,” she said.
I shrugged because otherwise I might cry again and my face was already an ecological disaster. “That’s what Heart Witnesses are for.”
Cassie squeezed my hand. Behind us, Mom’s door closed softly. Ahead of us, the music rose. And because my family was apparently determined to make grief and joy share a hallway until they learned to behave, we went to the reception.