Flinn's mind slipped backward before she could stop it, the noise of the arena fading beneath the weight of memory.
She was small again. Small enough that her mother's hand had felt enormous wrapped around hers, small enough that the garden behind the Mork estate had seemed like its own entire world. Her mother used to kneel down to her height whenever she said it, always at eye level, never looking down at her the way most adults did.
Be true to yourself. Don't be afraid of what others expect from you.
Never once had her mother told her to be like her twin. Never a comparison, never a quiet suggestion that she measure herself against the sister who'd come into the world only minutes before her. Just her own name, her own shape, her own permission to become whoever she turned out to be.
Flinn remembered holding onto that harder than she'd held onto almost anything else in her life.
