POV: Lyra

“I did not plan for the truth to move before I was ready.”

My mother notices things before I say them, she always has.

It isn't a magical gift; it is the burden of a woman who has spent a lifetime watching the people she loves survive things that should have killed them.

She watches the way I pause before sitting, the way my hand presses briefly against my stomach as if I am steadying something fragile inside me, She does not interrupt. She never interrupts when something is ...