The pack vote on the Luna title took place on a cold morning in early winter.
Nadia did not attend. She had been invited. She had a right to be present as a pack member in good standing, which her returned status had confirmed but she had considered it and decided, with the deliberateness she brought to most decisions now, that her presence would change the shape of the room in ways she did not want to be responsible for.
Sable attended. She was the one who told Nadia about it afterward, sitting on a
stool in the studio while Nadia worked at the bench, describing it in the careful way she had of reporting things she had strong feelings about while not allowing the feelings to overtake the accuracy.
"There were forty-three pack members who voted," Sable said. "The elder circle
counted them. Twenty-six voted to formally remove the title from Lyra. Seventeen voted to retain it."
Nadia kept her hands moving on the sigil frame she was working on. "What's the
threshold for removal?" She asked.
"Two-thirds. So it didn't pass."
*A pause.*
"How did your father vote?" Nadia asked.
Sable was quiet for a moment. "He abstained."
Nadia nodded slightly. She had expected something like this - not absolution,
not condemnation. Something in the middle, which was where Cassian had always lived.
"The conditional censure still stands," Sable continued. "And the title is functionally nominal - the council's review process means she can't exercise any of the Alpha-adjacent authority that comes with Luna without a council sign-off. It's a title
without much power attached right now."
"For now," Nadia said.
"For now," Sable agreed.
They sat in the quiet studio. Outside, the winter light was thin and flat, coming
through the high windows in long pale rectangles across the floor.
"Does it bother you?" Sable asked. "That it didn't pass."
Nadia considered the question honestly. "No it doesn't."
Sable looked at her with the evaluating attention she'd had since she was small.
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Really." She set down her stylus and looked at her daughter. "A vote of twenty-six to seventeen, in a pack that didn't want to see any of this to begin with - that's not a
failure. That's more than half the voting members saying, openly and formally, that what was done to me was wrong. That's on the record." She paused. "A year ago, everyone signed documents handing me the cure that would have saved my life so it could be used for a bonding ceremony instead. Twenty-six of those same people voted to hold Lyra accountable. That's a shift I built. The letter built it."
Sable was quiet for a moment, processing her thoughts. "You planned all of this. Before you died. All of it."
"Not all of it," Nadia said honestly. "I planned the documents. The records. I planned for things to be accurate, and for accuracy to be available when it was needed.
What people did with that accuracy, I couldn't plan that. I could only make sure it was there."
Her daughter looked at her.
"That's what you were doing those last three days," she said.
"It wasn't giving up.""No."
"But you were building something."
"Yes."
Sable exhaled slowly. It was the exhale of someone releasing a tension that had
been held for a long time. "I knew," she said again. "I think I knew."
Nadia looked at her daughter - the grey eyes, the careful composure, the authority that was settling into her more completely now than it had a few months ago.
She looked at her with the full attention of a person who has learned, through the
particular education of losing everything and returning to find what remains, what is
actually worth looking at.
"There's something I want to talk to you about," Nadia said. "It's about the studio. The design work."
Sable straightened slightly.
"I've been in correspondence with the independent crafters' consortium - the
neutral-zone organization that supports unaffiliated runework practitioners. They've
offered me a senior fellowship. It would mean the studio could apply for consortium
designation, which means access to cross-pack clients. Not just Ironstone."
*She paused.*
"It would also mean I could take on apprentices from outside the pack."
Sable was listening with her full attention.
"I want to know if you'd be interested," Nadia said. "In the work itself. Not as an
obligation. If it genuinely interests you."
A silence.
"I've been practicing the inscription sequences," Sable said. "The ones in your
notebooks. I pulled them from the archive copy. Isolde gave me access."
She paused.
"I think I might be good at it."
Nadia looked at her. "You'll need to show me then." she said.
Sable stood, went to the bag she'd brought, and pulled out a notebook.
Nadia took it. Opened it.
The work inside was not polished - it was the work of someone learning, with the visible marks of correction and revision and process that learning always carries. But underneath the roughness, the instinct was correct. The sequence logic was sound. The design sense was, in some ways, closer to her own than the work of either apprentice she had formally trained.
She looked at her daughter and smiled in satisfaction. "Tomorrow morning," she said.
"We start early."
And for the first time in a very long time, Sable Rhowe smiled the wide, unguarded smile she had been keeping in reserve.