In the wake of the night's revelations, Raya slept hard and long and woke far too late. Perhaps because her dreams were so doused in silver starlight, the morning sunshine startled her, beating in blinding yellow waves through her thin curtain and dripping onto her skin in the form of heated dewdrops. Rubbing at her stinging eyes and the ache behind them, she kicked off her sheet and rose from her makeshift sleeping spot on the floor beside her bed, stretching until her elbows cracked. Somehow, the ache in her limbs—courtesy of the hard floor—felt even worse.

The sun's glare fought her reluctance and probed for urgency. She fumbled to retie her nightdress, throw on her yellow cloak, run rough fingers through her copiously tangled hair, pausing only to check on Corvin. He hadn't stirred; the sight of his peaceful, expressionless face poking out from the sheets sent a wave of calm sliding through her, like a scooping breeze billowing up from her stomach. She still felt guilty for overexerting him, but he'd shown no sign of blame last night and was recovering quickly. All in all, what could've spelled disaster had truly been a success.

Stars still sprinkled the back of her thoughts, bright upon deep black, making her every step feel light. She couldn't help the smile that buoyed her lips as she slipped quietly from the room.

It vanished immediately as she skittered to a halt at the top of the stairs. Her house was full of people.

The clamour of overlapping voices seeped up the staircase like a steady flood. As Raya inched downward, she felt the phantom weight of water on her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her house was never this loud, not without reason. And if there was a reason, then...

Confusion laced the strangling feeling in her gut, hammered by her own tapping prayer, a repetitive please not today, please not today.

Please, not her.

She stepped into the main room and felt the words scatter as glass shards into the pit of her stomach. Her feet stopped moving and held her there, a statue glued to the edge of the doorway, as if pausing and waiting somehow defied reality, but there was very little way to deny both her eyes and her ears at once.

"—must hurry before we..." Her mother's brusque stampede of words trailed into silence as she whirled, gaze pinning Raya and squashing any last-ditch effort to hide. "Ah, Rayanah! Our sleeping beauty awakes." Her smile was clipped and trimmed any warmth from the term. "Good morning. You'll have to dress quickly."

Excuses tumbled over one another and left Raya's mouth empty and dry. She swallowed, trying to force her spine straighter and her heart to stop thundering. "Apologies," she managed, voice too quiet. "I—I wasn't expecting your return so soon."

Midway through turning her face away, her mother froze. Wearing a dark-lined frown, she snatched the lip gloss Yasmin had been offering out from the attendant's fussing hands, then strode forward, posture so rigid Raya could taste the stone-cold shadow she cast. "Did you truly think I would remain absent during such an important event?"

"Of course not." Raya barely heard her own hollow whisper. With every thudding second, she harder fought the urge to glance backward at the open staircase; it consumed so much of her focus that her confusion leapt out too readily and left her voice far too airly casual. "What's the occasion?"

Rana Kel-Jabir scoffed. "The trial of Zephyrine's new prodigy, of course." She pursed her lips to smother them with the indigo gloss, a twist that only emphasised her scowl.

Of course. Raya's back throbbed as if her spine were being dusted by a hot poker, so blazingly conscious of what she had to hide. If she'd been riding some kind of high since her dream-like night, it had been shockingly short, and was coming down all around her now with a resonating crash.

Her mother was home. Her mother wasn't as forgiving as her brother, was so distant from Yasmin's meek nature they were practically opposites. Nothing hid from her mother.

She wished with an aching heart that she'd abandoned Corvin in the sands last night. Even bleeding out there, alone, he'd have been safer than he was right now.

The panic trickling through the cracks in her mask must've been mistaken for more blank bemusement, for her mother's stare grew sharper. "Have you stayed awake at all while I've been away? Surely you know of this?"

"Yes," Raya said in a hurry, head crowded with noise. "Y-yes, I have."

"Her name, then?"

"Her..." The sound crumbled into nothing. She remembered hearing it, but it wouldn't come to her tongue. Corvin's name was louder.

A murmur brushed her ear—her brother's murmur, soft and graceful enough as it glanced by that she just barely resisted a flinch. She echoed as quickly as she could, gratitude burrowing forth and providing some relief. "Amina Shi-Sabri." She pushed out half a laugh in order to shape a perfect smile, the only one that would appease her mother. "It's the only name I've heard all week. I could never forget it. I... don't know what allowed me to misplace the date of her trial."

Disapproval still lurked in her mother's low hum, but the bulk of her attention, blissfully, shifted to applying the indigo gloss. "Your scattered memory concerns me," she spoke into the crescent arc it shaped, "but at least you aren't stupid. Dress as quickly as you can."

The words were aimed at her, but the flick of her hand beckoned at Yasmin, who swarmed forward as if the gesture were a noose. She mumbled a faint, "Good morning," and towed Raya towards her dressing room while she searched for the breath to respond. She went willingly, however, glad for the opportunity to turn her back on her mother and briefly slide out of sight.

In the brief period of relief, she finally relented and tossed a glance at the stairs. The desire to race up them and warn Corvin beat like a drum in her ears, but the chaos that followed wrapped chains around her limbs, entrapping her here. There was no running, no last ditch effort to fix her mistake.

If the trial were imminent enough to cause such a rush, they'd all be gone soon enough, and there wouldn't be time for anything to go wrong. That hope was the only one she had to hold, so she clung to it.

The thought of leaving Corvin alone still invaded her chest in a mess of squeezing vines, but the rush kept her moving through it. She scooped up the patterned lilac dress Yasmin offered out to her and darted behind the changing curtain, yanking it closed before her attendant could get a word in, blending the sea of chatter into white noise as they were confined to the shapes of shadows etched out in the fine fabric. It was only then she realised how little she'd been breathing. She took in a slow, steadying inhale, then released it. The moment froze, just barely, as she watched them all move and talk as one dark mass, before she forced herself to snap out of it and occupied herself with the complex array of ribbons that cinched the dress at her waist.

Yasmin pounced on her the moment she emerged. She gushed out some long-drawn compliment that sounded as if it were spoken underwater, so Raya only nodded and smiled and took her usual seat. The mirror was more unbearable than ever. It reflected back shiny discs of fear, laid like a veil over her eyes. She stared, tasting her panic, and willed it to fade.

Something cold and heavy—a pearl necklace, delicately woven by cord as blue as a real midnight—touched the bare spot beneath her collarbone, and she flinched. Behind, Yasmin inhaled sharply in echo. "I'm sorry," she said, then leaned down to whisper in Raya's ear, wide, worried eyes fixed on hers through the mirror. "I should've thought to warn you of your mother's visit. Are you okay?"

"Fine," Raya said before she could think about it. She hated herself immediately. She wanted to be grateful for Yasmin's attentiveness, that someone knew this was hard and cared, but her thumping heart drowned most of that out. "It's fine. Don't worry about it."

Back in the hall, her mother clapped her hands, and the sharp snap of the sound wrought silence in waves in its wake. "Remember, this is a monumental occasion in history!" she announced, though it sounded more like a scolding than a simple declaration. "The Kel-Jabir company cannot be late. We leave in one minute!"

As Yasmin scrambled to finish taming Raya's hair, she counted each second of that minute, holding each number like a weighty stone in her palm. There was safety and solidity in it, but it meant nothing. The stakes had risen. As long as her mother was around, Corvin was in terrible danger, and it was all her fault.

If the ground didn't swallow her up soon, insanity would. What had her life become?

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