NEVA POV
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Lera was with him.
Not a surprise — they'd been moving through the same orbit since the kitchen conversation weeks ago, the specific gravity of two people who hadn't announced anything but were clearly no longer arriving places separately. What surprised me was the third person.
My mother.
Issa Aris, standing at the back gate of the Mallen compound in a coat I recognized from ten years of seeing it in the hall at home, looking around the compound with the expression of someone who had been preparing for this encounter for long enough that the preparation had made her nervous rather than ready.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
I thought about the letter. The unsent one, from the wardrobe, the one that had reframed an entire childhoo
