Millicent turned to Agnes, leaving the girls behind her as she went out the door, discussing something about timelines and deposits. They headed down the corridor, their footsteps quieting as they walked away. Talks of coin and crowns faded into the distance. The girls were left alone in the dorm. Tears won the battle at long last, breaking through Amaris’s barrier as they began to spill. Hot, salty water tumbled down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” Nox said, choking her. She pulled Amaris into the sort of crushing hug that communicated everything she failed to say. She stroked Amaris’s hair in a frenzied attempt at comfort. “I should have done something. I should have stopped her. I—”

“I’m not going with her,” Amaris said, her voice quivering. She used the cloth of both sleeves to mop up the buckets of free-flowing tears.

“I know,” Nox said, voice wavering. “I know.”

“No,” Amaris clarified, hiccuping against her suppressed sobs. “I’ll never go with that woman. I’ll never go with her.”

* * *

Nox crushed Amaris against her with a primal sense of protection. She’d fight, she’d die, she’d kill until no one stood before she let Amaris go with that woman. The charge between them was something more profound than the ties of family. There was a ferocity and bond between the girls that held no logic, no reason. Nox squeezed her more tightly before loosening her hold. She took Amaris’s face in her hands, dark eyes burning with intensity as she begged Amaris to see her sincerity.

“And I will never let her take you,” she swore, her words a solemn oath.

Nox’s life had never meant much to her or anyone around her. She’d been discarded before she was old enough to remember such horrors. She’d always been glad she couldn’t recall being sold to the orphanage the way that Emily and Ana must. Nox couldn’t imagine what her own mother had been like, though there had always been a sickening pity that the matrons had when they looked at Nox that made her feel like her arrival had not been the tear-filled loving regret of a mother making the right choice for their child.

Her first memory was of Amaris.

In her twisted upbringing, she had found purpose. It had been planted as a tiny silver seed. It sprouted into starlit connection with the snow-white baby whom the other children hated with their jealousy. Amaris had loved her back, and their moonlit plant grew into a metallic wildflower with roots so deep that they bore themselves into her very core. For years she had called it friendship, and for years that had been what it was. The two stayed cast off from the others, defending their inseparable bond. To one another, they were the world.