I didn’t know where to put the feeling it stirred.
And oh, gods, the longing. It was actually painful, the knowledge that I didn’t have a family as warm and bright and happy as Judy’s.
Siblings who adored me. A mother who doted on me.
What did that woman in the forest say? ‘There is no loss greater than that which you barely had.’
When the pie came out of the oven, golden and steaming, the entire family cheered as if it were some great victory. Mrs. Barnes sliced it generously, pressing the first plate into my hands.
It was sweet, tart, rich-comfort baked into a crust.
“Take some with you,” she said later, packing not only the pie but an entire collection of baked goods into bags I tried, and failed, to refuse. “Food is love. And we have plenty to give.”
By the time I left, my arms were full, my chest lightened by something I hadn’t expected to feel today-belonging, even if borrowed.
That feeling lasted until I reached my own doorstep, and there she was.
My own mother.
And just like that-in a pattern that was becoming as familiar as breathing-the warmth I had carried all the way home chilled, brittle as ice.
SERAPHINA’S POV
I was exhausted. That had to be it. Or maybe my wistfulness and longing had conjured up this outrageous sight.
Because there was no universe where Margaret Lockwood stood on my porch with a pie in her hands-eerily identical to the one Mrs.
Barnes had pressed into mine-like some doting mother out of a storybook.
Not when the pain from the last time I’d seen her was still fresh, like a new wound.
The image rose in my mind-her face carved with disdain, her words slicing me open in that suffocating hospital room. She tried to kill my daughter!
She hadn’t even flinched as she delivered that gutting accusation.
Whether she knew it or not, in that very moment, with the broken pieces of my family as witnesses, my mother had shoveled the last bit of dirt onto the grave of our already dead relationship.
She’d chosen Celeste. She’d shoved me aside.
And there was nothing left between me and Margaret Lockwood anymore.
So I tried to ignore her.
My arms ached from the weight of pastry-filled containers and cellophane-wrapped pies, but I tightened my hold on the bags and shifted them against my hip as I took a long, steadying breath.
Maybe if I hurried, I could make it to my door, slip inside, and pretend Margaret Lockwood was nothing more than a cruel hallucination born of exhaustion and stupid, stupid longing.
“Seraphina” Her voice was as it always was. Too composed, too careful.
She reached out for me, but I jerked away before she could touch me.
“Do I know you?” I asked, my voice as composed and careful as hers.
Hurt flashed across her face before she skillfully masked it. “I’m your mother, Sera.”
I scoffed before I could help myself. “Nope. Not doing this.”
“Sera-
“You made your choice, remember?” I snapped, cursing myself when my voice wobbled. “Celeste is your only daughter
Her lips parted, and that mask fractured, just slightly, around the edges, and suddenly she looked…older. So much older.
And tired.
Her spine was still stiff as a ruler, her posture screaming control, but her eyes-those sharp, unyielding Lockwood eyes-wavered.
I hated myself for the sudden urge to drop the bags in my hands and wrap my arms around her.
And then-as I was still trying to stamp out that ridiculous feeling-she sighed. “I was wrong?
The feeling vanished.
“Wrong?” My laugh was bitter, humorless. “Wrong doesn’t even begin to scrape the barrel of all the faults you bear.”
“You have every right to be upset with me,” she admitted, her chin dipping.
It startled me, that dip-like lowering a crown from her head. “I was…irrational at the hospital. I let my anger, my grief, blind me.”
I nodded. “Please, don’t take the blindfold off on my account. Keep your eyes on your only daughter, okay?”
I adjusted the bags in my hand and reached for my door handle.
“But I came here because I heard you advanced in the Trials. I wanted to congratulate you.”
I blinked, turning back to her. “You…watched?”
She smiled softly. “Of course, dear. My daughters are participating.”
Of course.
For some ridiculous, inane reason, Celeste was part of Frostbane’s team in the OTS.
I could only thank my lucky stars that I hadn’t run into her-yet. I wasn’t a fool; I knew that our regularly scheduled confrontation was still in my near future.
And, of course, Celeste’s participation would be the reason my mother would deem it fit to watch the LST.
I eyed the pie in Margaret’s hand. My words came out as a jagged whisper. “And I’m supposed to believe these aren’t just Celeste’s leftovers?”
She actually had the nerve to flinch. “No,” she said quickly, clutching the pie box as though it were precious evidence she had to submit. “
These aren’t leftovers, Sera. I prepared this separately. Intentionally. For you.”
The box trembled slightly in her hands as she extended it toward me, her gaze a contrasting mixture of defiance and shame.
“It’s your favorite.” Her self-deprecating smile seemed calculated to garner sympathy or leniency from me. “I made sure this time.”
I almost didn’t take the box. My instincts screamed at me to leave it dangling in the air, to watch her face tighten with that same wounded pride she’d inflicted on me my entire life.
But my traitorous fingers brushed the edge of the box before I could stop them. 1
I told myself I was only curious-I wanted to see if she’d actually gotten my favorite pie correct.
Margaret’s relief was a fragile exhale. She placed the box carefully on the porch rail, as if she didn’t trust me to keep hold of it.
“I’ll go.” She took a shaky step back.
Her voice barely rose above a whisper. “I didn’t come to intrude or push you, dear. Just…to say congratulations. I hope you know you’ve made me-” She stopped, swallowing hard, as if the words were painful to release. “You’ve made me proud.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and descended my porch steps. Her heels clicked against the pavement, steady as a metronome, until the night swallowed her figure whole.
I stared at the pie box like it might detonate.
It looked like the physical embodiment of every spiteful word, every cutting dismissal, every nail hammered into my psyche.
I wanted to hurl it straight into the trash.
But then my eye caught on something scrawled in one corner of the cardboard lid.
A small, childish doodle-almost invisible unless you knew to look. It was a little crescent moon sketched in blue ink, curved around a five-pointed star.
My breath hitched. My knees wobbled under the weight of recognition.
My lucky charm. It was a silly little thing I came up with when I was little, and I doodled it over every single space I came across- mirrors, napkins, once on Margaret’s favorite apron.
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