If Lyra had to pick the strangest thing about this new life, it wasn’t the Council calls, or the way her name had turned into shorthand for “complicated reforms.”
It was the invitation to a baby shower.
“Not a shower, technically,” Ivy had insisted. “Just a celebration. Food, gifts, mild emotional blackmail.”
“Same thing,” Sienna had muttered.
Now Lyra stood in the big room with a paper cup of punch in her hand, watching a circle she’d never imagined for herself coalesce around someone else.
Rhea—Rhea, of all people—sat on a chair in the middle, one hand on the small swell of her belly, the other swatting at Nia’s attempts to pile more gifts in her lap.
“If I get one more onesie with teeth on it, I’m naming the kid Lawsuit,” Rhea grumbled.
“You say that like it’s a bad idea,” Luka s
