Luna went rigid.
A hairline fracture moved through the certainty she had been maintaining since the moment the convoy had crossed the border. Her lips parted, but no words assembled themselves and no sound came.
The machine held its rhythm.
The room remained exactly where it was, sealed and still, the monitors tracking the only truth it was currently able to confirm.
She had no answer.
The silence that met her was made, in part, of every year she had not spent looking for one.
Far away, in a room in Nightshade, the daughter they had lost without fully realizing they had been the ones to let her go, was learning, for the first time in a long time, what it felt like to be protected. To be chosen. To be seen clearly and not found to be a problem requiring management.
She was learning what it felt like to be cared for by someone who had decided she was worth the cost of it.
