For a moment, nobody breathes.
Selene goes rigid under her mother's hand, every muscle locked, like her body hasn't decided yet whether to lean into the touch or flinch away from it. Fourteen years of absence stand between them, and it shows in the way her shoulders shake, the way her voice comes out smaller than I've ever heard it. I watch her search her mother's face for something, anything, that might still resemble the woman she remembers from a childhood spent trailing after her through royal gardens, and I can tell by the way her expression falters that whatever she's looking for isn't there anymore, if it ever was.
"Mother?"
"Look at you." The woman's hood falls back, revealing a face that could be Selene's in twenty years, sharp-chinned, pale-haired, eyes the same restless blue.
