Nova's POV
The letter was in her pocket.
She hadn't read it yet. She'd stood in the east wing bedroom with her mother's handwriting in her hands and her brother's silence beside her and she'd looked at the words For Nova. When you're ready and she'd understood, with the bone-deep certainty of someone who had been carrying things for a very long time, that she was not ready yet.
Not here. Not standing in the middle of a room full of people watching her face.
She had folded it carefully, tucked it against her chest, and told Ash with her eyes what she couldn't say out loud: later. He had understood immediately, because he was Ash and he had always understood the things she couldn't say, even before the silence, even when they were children and she was the older one who was supposed to know everything and didn't.
So the letter was in her pocket.
And she was walking to breakfast.
