By the time they returned home that night, the shape of the story had already been decided, even if the details still needed arranging — and it was Alina, woken from sleep by the sound of raised voices in the hallway outside her room, who found out exactly how much had changed while she'd slept.
"Get up." Her father's voice, through her door, carried none of its usual distant coolness — it was sharp now, urgent, entirely unfamiliar in its intensity. "Alina. Get up and come downstairs."
She sat up, disoriented, the last threads of the gray-green dream still clinging to her, and pulled on a robe before opening the door to find her father already turning away, expecting her to follow rather than waiting to confirm that she would.
Downstairs, the living room held a tableau she would remembe
