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“Please alight forMain Street, visitors to the city’sTourist Centre, theDocks, and sectionTwelveof theHeritage Society Tour.”

I hadn’t even noticed the tracks they’d laid down in amongst the cobblestone or the new power lines criss-crossing through the sky. Lucais tensed as a large group of people poured out of the tram and spread out around us like a nest of ants, dissipating into the existing crowd within moments.

“Please stand clear. Doors closing.”

The tram began to crawl along the tracks again with a faint metallic buzz. It stuck out to me like a sore thumb in an alien world, full of sensory overwhelm as the sounds of nonsensical human chatter, the perfume of beautified chemicals and car exhaust fumes, and the scratch of polyester shoulders brushed up against us.

A tram—in Belgrave! They’re fucking joking—

“We have to get to the townhouse,” I said, my voice thick with the tears that were flowing freely down my red-hot cheeks. I felt feverish, burning up, even though it was very clearly winter again in the human world and the wind was bitterly cold.

There was no guarantee that my mother and sister would still live in the same townhouse, given that the rest of the world seemed to have changed in unimaginable ways during my absence. But with my father out of the picture, I had a feeling that my mother wouldn’t have found a good enough reason to change anything about their living situation.

After all, the only times she had moved us in the past were because of him.

They were separating and he wanted to sell the house, or he’d punched too many holes in the walls for the real estate not to notice, or she couldn’t afford to absorb the rent increase once he’d left.

So I wasn’t surprised to find that my mother’s car was sitting in the same government housing driveway as if I’d only been gone a few days—not the way that I was surprised to see the little black hatchback parked beside it.

“No,” I whispered, racing towards the front door. Another shot of déjà vu attacked my nervous system as I fumbled with the door handle, banging my other fist into the wood. My head was swimming with emotion as I grappled for the off switch in the new reality playing out before my tearful eyes.If I can only wrench this fucking door open and step back into the hallway, it’s fine. It’ll be fine.“No, no, no, no, no, no—”

“Aura.” Lucais’s voice was tight, even as he reached around me and knocked on the door like a perfectly normal person would do under perfectly normal circumstances. Neither of which were applicable to us. “Aura, I didn’t—”

The front door swung open, cutting his voice off like a guillotine, and revealed a teenage girl.

Dressed in a white crop top and baggy grey sweatpants, she had shoulder-length, pale blonde hair with hot pink dye on the ends. She was very pretty with her blue eyes, light splattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, and the glimmering sheen of makeup dusted across the high points of her face. I could tell she had her eyebrows professionally threaded, and possibly her lashes done, too.

A part of me was assaulted by an unexpected twinge of jealousy as I recalled all of the normal things I’d missed since I left—like hair salons and makeup, and wearing dresses without fear of getting caught on brambles whilst running for my life.

The girl looked between my face and the face of the High King as if we were trying to sell her something or ask if she had the time to talk about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and my shoulders began to relax. For a moment, I almost believed we were at the wrong house, and I’d misremembered the number plate on my mother’s old car. Or maybe she’d sold it to pay rent.

But it was only for a moment.

Only until the girl rolled her eyes at us and turned her head to call out over her shoulder for someone in the house.

“Mama, Aura’s home!” Brynn shouted.

And then she turned and walked away from me, leaving the door between us wide open—and sealed permanently shut.

fifteen

A Handmade Crown

The years of practice I’d had of trying to conceal my pain and tears from my mother to prevent worsening the condition of her own state of mind should have served me well when she appeared in the doorway. But they did not.

The sight of my mother with more grey in her hair than strawberry blonde, wrinkles and sunspots decorating her complexion, and the loss of so many missing years in her light blue eyes cracked something permanently in my soul.

The High King must have felt it coming on.

Before the scream left my dampened lips, the whole world came to a grinding halt.

Everything around us froze. The roaring sound of traffic on busy nearby roads, the hum of tourists talking and laughing down at the docks, and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway behind my mother that hadn’t been there during any of the years I’d spent living with her. The chirping of birds in overhanging tree branches, and the barking of the neighbour’s dog behind the gate next door. The blinking of my mother’s eyes. The way her mouth had automatically begun to curve up into agrin, and the way her hands had already started to reach out to pull me into a hug.

All of it stopped, paralysed in time and space.

Paused so that nobody except for the High King himself could witness me breaking into pieces.

In the very back of my mind, I felt stupid.