The room after the awakening had its own atmosphere. The light was gone from the walls, the stone was stone again, and the five girls inside acted differently than they had when they arrived.
One fear had ended. The presence it had been consuming was free for something else.
Beadu dropped onto the end of the bed beside Mab and looked at her out of the corner of her eye.
"So, you aren't going to explode."
Mab blinked at her. "I was not, going to explode."
"You didn't know that."
Beadu said it very evenly. "I didn't know that, none of us knew that for a good part of this afternoon."
She looked at her properly. "You look different."
"Different how?" Mab said.
"Less like a sheet of paper. Your hands stopped shaking."
Mab looked at her hands. They were not shaking. She turned them over once and then looked again, and the simple motion kept her attention in a way that had nothing to do with distress.
"It's been a while since I was able to just sit like this..."
