One heartbeat Alyssara stood a step from my table with threads in her fingers and hunger in her eyes. The next heartbeat she was at the threshold, toes exactly on the line where tile becomes hall, as if the scene had been rewritten and she had always been there.
Alyssara blinked once, delighted despite herself. "That was expensive," she noted, watching the fine tremor in my mother's hand and the brief gray in a strand of Alice's hair that hadn't been gray at the start of dinner.
"It was worth it," Alice said.
Alyssara's gaze moved over the room one last time. She looked at Rose and saw the woman who asked my daughter for a word and earned it. At Reika, who keeps my house from falling down when I have chosen a complicated life. At Rachel, who cleans the air with light whether it thanks her or not. At Cecilia, who will make law be kind if it kills her. At Seraphina, who will freeze the sea if that is what keeps me warm. At Luna, who held me together until I could hold myself.
