We left the next morning, after a last breakfast with Stella, who ate her toast in very small, very slow bites as if she could stretch the meal out long enough that I'd miss the gate. My parents and Aria came to see us off. It was a short goodbye, warm and ordinary, and that made it easier.
My mother hugged me exactly as she always had. Since the garden, that had been the strangest part of everything. She had told me what she was, and then she had gone home and made Douglas his coffee and asked Aria about her week, as if nothing had changed. I was starting to understand that this was the point. She meant to keep the old shape of the family standing for Douglas and Aria for as long as she could, and she was very, very good at it.
Seraphina and I took the long-range warp gate from Avalon to Mount Hua. The surge of folded space let go of us, and I stepped out into thin, cold mountain air and the sight of old halls built onto peaks that had no business holding them up.
