Thorne's POV
The woman from the eastern pass was not Nova's mother.
He had watched Nova's face in the infirmary doorway when she saw her the way it had gone completely still, that specific stillness of someone bracing for something enormous and then the slow, quiet exhale when the healer said approximately thirty years old, no identification, no memory of how she got there.
Not her mother. Not old enough. Not the right eyes up close.
Nova had stood in the corridor after for a long time without speaking.
Then she'd said: "Someone sent her."
"Seraphine," Thorne had said.
"Or a message about Seraphine." She'd looked at her hands the frost moving in small unconscious patterns, the habit of her magic when her mind was working hard. "Someone who looks like me, found in the eastern pass, nine days before the new moon." She'd looked up. "That's not coincidence. That's a letter."
