ia'

t did not

ng meant attention, and attention meant pain. So I followed without a word, mat

e. Lavender. I had smelled it once before, years ago, when a traveling merchant's cart passed through the p

ferent. This

an said. "I will p

to my collar

ctly. Something quieter. Recognition, maybe. Like

she said, her voice steady and unhurried. "I do not

d turned my

old, familiar, the only anchor I had in a day that had already unmoored me from everything I kne

ac

d ever looked at me and thought she might need a moment. They only looke

ed into

uckles, my shoulders, the cracked places on my elbows that never healed because the cold never let them. My mu

ngle, fragile moment-

Luna. Tonight, I would belong to a stranger. An

ayers of silk and lace that probably cost more than my entire existence was worth to the Cress family. But it was

w strokes. No questions about my face. No que

ready,"

d in th

dry even after being washed in warm water for the first time in fifteen years. The glamou

ays. Just two more days until my twentieth birthday.

e up. I told myself that every night before

etting married

y was brief

rthought, like no one had cared enough to make it beautiful. Stone walls. Torches burnin

ers, people who would be looking at me for the rest of my life whether I wanted them to or not. They watched m

n mother? Or something else-something they couldn't name, standing here in a white

ot look at me. He stood the way a man stands at the edge of a cliff-

not be broken. His robes were old and heavy, embroidered with symbols I did not recognize. A sacred flame

in front of me so no o

hat never left my hands no matter how hard I scrubbed. Fifteen years of gray water and raw knuckles. And now I stood

n's hand b

te, and gone. Like a match struck in a dark room. I felt it long after the contac

accident. I did not dare l

roned on, but I was

lm with trembling fingers. She should have been here. In whatever version of this day I had once allowed myself to imagine, she should have been

was alone.

n. I did not let the tears fall. I would not give this hall,

aid the words th

nd will be transferred to the Cre

ndred t

mach d

ears. The Cress family-the family that had never bought me a dress, never fed me a warm meal without making me scrub for it fir

those long, pale fingers and smile. She would call it compen

it to

and twelve. The day they put a pr

The hall went quiet-every wolf, every torch, every hel

accept t