"Arms up."
I raise my arms. She guides it over my head. The lining settles against my skin, cool at first, then warming. Mira adjusts the shoulders. Smooths the fabric down my sides. Steps behind me and does something to the back I can't see. Her fingers work small hooks, one at a time, pulling the fabric close against my ribs.
"Mirror," she says.
I turn.
The woman in the mirror is wearing a cream dress that falls to the floor, lace and beading catching the light with every breath. Her hair is down. The neckline cuts low enough to showthe crescent mark on her chest, crimson against cream, pulsing over her heart.
I don't look like a fighter. I don't look like a vampire who spent last night pulling ferals off playground fences. I look like someone about to walk into a garden and change her name.
Mira appears behind me in the mirror. She puts her chin on my shoulder.
"You look like someone getting married," she says.
"That's the idea."
"You'll cry."
"I won't."
"You will. And if you don't, I will."
She kisses both my cheeks and leaves.
Simone is in the corridor. Blush dress. Her hair is swept up, loose curls framing her face, a few strands left down at the back of her neck. She looks at me and her mouth opens and nothing comes out.
"Don't," I say. "If you start, I'll start."
"You look like Mom."
My throat closes. I breathe through it.
Simone takes my hand. Her grip is steady. Stronger than it was a week ago. Stronger than the week before that.
Footsteps in the corridor. Julian. He's in a dark suit, his collar straight, his hair combed back. The black patch over his left eye cuts a line across his temple where the skin is still pink. I've never seen Julian in a suit. He looks like a different man, except for the eye that's left. That one hasn't changed.
"I'm here to walk you," he says.
I look at him.
"Maximus asked," Julian says. "I said yes before he finished the sentence."
My eyes burn. I blink it back.
Julian offers his arm. I take it. Simone falls in at my other side.
We walk to the garden.
I stop at the entrance.
Candles line the path from here to the bench. Each one at the same height, the same distance from the next, the spacing precise in a way that says Isabelle measured with something other than her eye. The floodlights are off. Caleb has redirected the compound's exterior lighting so it falls indirect against the oaks instead of down on the garden, and the candles do the rest.
The bench is clean. The scar on the oak from the compound assault is uncovered. Nobody asked to hide it. I'm glad.
The oaks lean. Caleb strung lights in the branches.
Marcellus stands at the arch. The arch isn't an arch. It's the oaks themselves, the branches angled overhead, the lights catching the leaves. Marcellus is in a dark suit. His expression is solemn.
