Serena’s POV
I didn’t go back to my room after the council meeting, because if I had locked myself in those walls I would have broken down, and I refused to give Mirah that satisfaction. Instead, I found myself outside, standing near the fountain, where the water rose and fell in steady arcs, its sound soft enough to calm but not strong enough to silence the noise inside my head.
Her words kept replaying as if she had branded them into me: “I’m pregnant.”
I thought I was prepared for anything, but I wasn’t prepared for that. Not because I wanted Kael back, not even because I thought I still had some secret claim over him, but because it made everything suddenly clear. Mirah wasn’t the kind woman she pretended to be in front of others, not the generous Luna she liked to play at; she was
