She was sitting on my bed when I came back.Not Maren. Not Luca.Vivian.She had not dressed yet. Her hair was loose, which I had not seen in years, and she sat with her hands folded in her lap in the careful way she always sat when she was holding herself together by force.I stopped in the doorway.She looked up.No sweetness. No performance. Just my sister, smaller than the version of her I kept in my memory, sitting in my room in the early morning light with her eyes red at the edges."Close the door," she said.I did.She did not speak immediately. I did not push her. I moved to the chair by the window and sat, and we stayed like that for a moment, two sisters in a room that had never fully belonged to either of us."You were gone seven years," Vivian said finally.Her voice was quiet. Not accusing. Something worse than that."I know.""Do you know what they told me?" She looked at her hands. "They told me I had to be perfect. That I had to be everything a future Luna was suppose
Last Updated : 2026-06-27 Read more