ARIA WINTERS
I don't cry.
I think I want to, at some point, but it never actually gets there.
What I'm feeling is like something bigger than crying. It just sits heavily on my chest, not bulging. I crash on the floor of Kael's study, back against the wall, knees pulled up, the photograph still in my hand even though I've already looked at it about forty times.
My mom's alive?
Fifteen years I've been grieving a woman who was apparently sitting in some gray little room this whole time. Fifteen years of a necklace and a journal and a grave I never even got to visit because Moonridge didn't bother telling me where they buried her, if they even did bury anything, if there was ever anything to bury at all.
Kael sits down on the floor next to me. He doesn't try to say anything smart or try
