Aurora's POV
By the second day I had stopped going to the door.
Not because I'd given up, but because the energy it cost to stand and try the handle and confirm what I already knew was energy I needed for other things. Like staying calm. Like thinking clearly. Like not letting the room shrink around me the way rooms did when you'd been inside them too long with nothing but your own thoughts.
Nobody came to the door.
Not once.
On the second evening I stopped knocking and sat cross-legged on the floor with my back against the wall beneath the window and I thought about my mother. Mireille. I'd known her name my whole life, it was the one thing Dad had never stripped from me, perhaps because keeping it cost him nothing. But I had never known her as a person. I had been given the outline
