Mom dropped her fork onto her breakfast plate, her hand going to my forehead. “Your color is off, l’venok,” she muttered. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling back from her touch so I could stare at Nova’s empty seat on the other side of mine.

After our trip to the emergency room weeks before, I’d looked up the age someone had to be in order to get legally married. If Nova’s parents gave their consent, I could marry her when she turned seventeen. But I didn’t think her dad would let me do that, so that meant I had to wait until she was eighteen. Nova would be four in November. That meant I had to wait a little over fourteen years.

That seemed like an eternity. I wanted her to stay with me now. Instead, I would have to let her get on the plane in a few days. And the worst part was that I didn’t know when I would get to see her again.

Would I ever?

“Well, I don’t like that color,” Zariah complained as she walked into the dining room with her phone in one hand. I looked at her in annoyance, only to find she wasn’t even looking my way. Her eyes were on the screen of her phone. “It’s ugly, and with your skin tone, it makes you look ugly too.”

“Zariah!” Zia Scarlett scolded as she lifted her head from the stack of papers Dad had given her to look over before he’d gone to a meeting earlier. “You are being rude and cruel.”

“No, I’m not,” her eldest daughter argued. “I’m being honest. What would be cruel is if I allowed my best friend to be seen in public in such an awful dress.”

“She’s right!” I heard the annoying sound of her friend’s whine, and it finally clicked in my head that they were on a video call. “My mom’s stylist picked out this dress, and I called Zariah for her advice. I knew she wouldn’t lie to me. Now I just have to convince my mother that it would be embarrassing for everyone if someone took my picture in this hideous thing.”

An idea began to form in my head, and I jumped up from my seat without a word to anyone. Running upstairs to my room, I did a little research on my laptop that I typically only used for homework assignments. I had an iPhone, but I rarely used it. Mostly it was just so Mom could call or text me when we weren’t together. I lost it more often than not because I didn’t really like it, but right then, I was thankful for it.

Another search and I found what I wanted, but I was going to need Mom’s help. Rushing back downstairs, I opened the front door where two guards always stood. “Get Mom’s car ready,” I told them. “She and I are going shopping.”

The one to my left gave a firm nod and extracted his phone from his suit jacket pocket. Shutting the door, I returned to the dining room, where Mom was sipping another cup of coffee. As soon as I entered the room, her blue eyes were on me.