My hand closed around the brooch.
The silver bird in my palm. The sewn bird in the box.
For one dizzy second, the two of them seemed to know each other.
My mother had worn this.
Selene Verita had stood in whatever beautiful room they had made for her and worn this dress while people smiled and waited to record what she would become.
Then she had survived them.
Then they had killed her anyway.
“You will not touch the fabric with bare hands until the fitting,” one of the women said.
I lifted my head.
She had spoken to the dress, not to me.
“It is silk,” she added.
“So am I meant to admire it from a respectful distance?”
Her eyes moved to Caswell.
Caswell said, “The dress is being returned as an honor.”
“No,” I said. “It is being displayed as one.”
The room went cold around the sentence.
I let it stay that way.
Caswell took one step toward the bed, but he didn’t touch the box.
“You will be expected to wear it.”
“I understood that part too.”
“Expectation is not the same as acceptance.”
“Funny how often the difference stops mattering once you people want something.”
For the first time, Caswell looked tired.
Then the school came back over him.
“The fitting summons will come tomorrow. Until then, the dress remains here. We will know if the box is opened again.”
I glanced at the basin. “Of course you will.”
The woman on the left drew the tissue over the dress, and I had to stop myself from reaching for her wrist.
Wanting to was the part I hated.
Cosima had been right. The trap wasn’t that I might obey them. The trap was that I might want my mother’s dress badly enough to forget who had handed it to me.
Caswell inclined his head.
