Selenay woke just before dawn; if she had had any dreams, she couldn’t remember them.

Yesterday everything had gone perfectly. With one exception. One glaring, aching exception.

Her father hadn’t been there.

A weight of crushing depression settled over her.

She opened her eyes and lay quietly in her bed as thin, gray light crept in through the cracks in her curtains. She closed her eyes again, and hot tears spilled from beneath her lids and down her temples to soak into her hair.

Her throat closed, and a cold, hard lump formed in it. Selenay tried to fight back the sobs, but one escaped anyway, and she turned over quickly and muffled her sobbing in her pillows. She didn’t want to wake her attendants, or alert the servants on the other side of the door. She didn’t want anyone to know she was crying.

They wouldn’t understand. They would think that she should be thrilled, not choked with tears. After all, her Festival had been a triumph, and people would talk about it for years. The Court had loved it. The common folk had adored it. Even the Seneschal and Keeper of the Treasury had been happy, for she had been very frugal, extracting the maximum benefit from every coin she’d spent, either overseeing the preparations herself, or sending people with stern demeanor and sharp eyes to do so for her. The Feast for the common folk had been a wild success, going on long into the night as folk brought or bought food of their own to extend that supplied by the Crown.

As for the entertainments for her Court, their Feast and dancing had been as much of a success, and for once, she’d had nothing but perfect dancing partners. Alberich had been right; having Heralds and Bards (and even a few Healers) alternate with her young nobles had made all the difference. Her gown—the first time she’d been out of mourning—had made her look beautiful; she hadn’t needed dubious compliments to tell her so, for her mirror and the frank gazes of the Bards and Heralds had made that clear enough.

But Sendar hadn’t been there, and it might just as well have been a total failure because of that. She’d tried to lose herself in the preparations, then to immerse herself in the happiness of other people, and she’d actually forgotten for a little—just a little. She’d smiled and even laughed, and when she’d come back here to her rooms, she’d been so tired she’d fallen straight asleep.

But she’d known, the moment that she awakened, that one day, one week, hadn’t changed anything, hadn’t filled the emptiness, hadn’t given her back the part of herself that was gone.