The girl arrived three days later.
She was small for seven. Thin in a way that made Sera's chest ache, like looking at a photograph of her own past. Her dark hair was matted, her clothes too large, her eyes too old for her face. She walked into the cottage like someone who expected the world to hurt her — because it always had, because kindness was just cruelty wearing a different mask.
Lumi was waiting for her.
Sera had worried about this. Had spent three days lying awake, planning, trying to figure out how to introduce her daughter to a child who represented everything Lumi had been forced to become. But when the moment came, all her planning fell apart.
The girl stood in the doorway. Frozen. Terrified. Her hands clenched at her sides, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. She sme
