Nova's POV
Her mother was not in the east garden.
She had made herself understand this on the walk from the kitchen the thirty seconds of corridor between Ryder's words and the garden door, which she had used to build a wall between what she hoped and what was possible.
Sixteen years. Her mother had not survived sixteen years. She had seen the kingdom fall. She had felt the thread between them go silent in a way that had no other explanation.
The woman in the garden was not her mother.
She pushed the door open.
The woman was sitting on the stone bench at the far end of the path. Dark hair, silver eyes, the winter-calm face of someone who had been still for a very long time. She looked up when Nova entered and something moved through her expression that was too complicated to name and too clear to misread.
She looked like Nova.
