I stared at the mirror and did not recognize the person looking back at me.
She was ethereal in a way I had never been—draped in ivory silk that caught the light like moonwater, her face half-hidden beneath a veil so fine it looked like woven air. She stood straight. She looked composed. She looked like a bride.
She looked nothing like me.
I searched her reflection for something familiar —the curve of my jaw, the particular way I held tension in my shoulders—and found only a stranger wearing my grief beneath borrowed beauty.
"Head down." My mother's voice was low and close, her breath warm against my ear as she made the final adjustments to the veil with hands that were almost steady. "Be graceful. Speak only when spoken to and say as little as possible. Do not draw attention to yourself." A pause, filled with everything she couldn't say aloud. "The lives of five hundred people are in your hands today, Celestria. Do not let them down."
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
