The morning my sister was supposed to become queen, I braided her hair with flowers I'd pressed myself.

That's the thing nobody tells you about being the other sister. You learn the shape of her happiness before you learn your own. You learn which pearls she prefers at her neck and which ones make her look pale. You learn to keep your opinions to yourself smooth and silent.

I'd been learning for twenty-two years. I was very good at it by now.

"Hold still," I murmured, working the last strand through.

Seraphine tilted her head anyway — just slightly, just enough — the way she always did when she thought being difficult was endearing. In the mirror, her reflection glowed. The wedding gown was ivory and gold, with a neckline that the seamstress had spent three days adjusting. On anyone else it would have looked like effort. On Seraphine it looked like she'd simply been born wearing it.

'I hate how easy it is for her.'

I pushed the thought down. This wasn't the time.

Around us, the dressing room hummed with the ladies-in-waiting circling with veils and powder and whispered reassurances, the distant sound of the palace bells beginning their slow warm-up roll. Through the window, I could see the courtyard filling below. Carriages. Nobles in their finest. A kingdom arranging itself into something worthy of the occasion.

"You're quiet," Seraphine said.

"I'm focused."

"You're always focused." She met my eyes in the mirror. Hers were pale green — our mother's eyes, everyone always said. Mine were darker. Ordinary. "It's your least attractive quality, Lian."

One of the ladies laughed softly. I smiled because that was what you did.

"The crown will sit better if the braid is tight," I said.

"The crown will sit however I place it." But she held still after that, which was its own kind of concession.

I finished the last knot and stepped back to look at her. 'Radiant' was the word people used for Seraphine, and they used it constantly, like they'd been given it at birth and couldn't imagine returning it. She was radiant. She had always been radiant. She would walk through those doors today and marry the most feared king in the realm and she would make it look effortless.

And I would stand somewhere behind the third row of nobles and watch.

"You'll find your own husband someday, Lian." Seraphine caught my eye in the mirror again. Her voice had gone light and sweet, the way it did when she was performing kindness. "Perhaps one less intimidating than the king."

Laughter rippled through the room. Gentle. Fond. The way people laughed at a beautiful woman's gentle cruelty — grateful to be in the radius of it.

'Less intimidating.' As if the dream was ever to match her. As if I'd been standing in this room for twenty years with any hope other than simply — surviving adjacent to her brightness without catching fire.

"I'm sure you're right," I said.

She turned from the mirror and held out her hands to be helped up. I took them. Her fingers were cold.

---

The palace bells began ringing properly at half past nine.

By then, Seraphine had been returned to her full radiance — gown smoothed, veil placed, a touch of rose at the lips that the head lady had insisted upon and Seraphine had only pretended to resist. The dressing room had thinned as attendants were sent to take their positions in the hall.

I stayed.

I told myself it was because someone should. Because our parents weren't here — our father had sent his formal congratulations in writing, which told you everything you needed to know about our family. Because someone in Seraphine's life should bear witness to this moment as a moment, not as a performance.

But honestly, I think I stayed because I wasn't ready to walk out there and become invisible yet.

'The king.' Even thinking the title did something uncomfortable to the inside of my chest.

I'd seen him once. Three years ago, at a trade summit our father had brought me to as a prop — proof of the Ashmere family's legitimate daughters and sensible prospects. King Caelian had been across a courtyard, speaking with his advisors, not performing anything. Just existing. And there was something about him — not beautiful, exactly, but 'certain' in a way that made the world around him look less certain by comparison. Like he'd decided exactly what kind of force he was and the universe had simply agreed.

I'd looked away. Filed it in the back of my mind under things that are not for you and left it there.

Seraphine had been arranged to marry him for two years. She'd spoken of him the way she spoke of all her best possessions — with casual pride and very little curiosity. “He's powerful. He's important. He'll make a good match.“

She never asked what he was actually like.

I always wondered.

Stop it, I told myself. Today is her day. You are here to braid her hair and carry her bouquet and smile from the third row.

"Seraphine." I turned. "It's almost time."

She was standing at the window.

I hadn't noticed her move. She'd drifted there while I was tangled in my own thoughts, and now she stood with her back to me, the veil catching the light, one hand resting very lightly on the window latch.

Something cold moved through me.

"Seraphine."

She didn't look at me when she answered.

She didn't turn. Her shoulders rose with a breath. Then lowered.

"Give me a moment," she said. Her voice was different — flattened, scraped clean of its usual music. "Just a moment alone. Before it all begins."

"The procession starts in—"

"I know when it starts." Still not turning. "I just need — one moment. That's all I'm asking."

I looked at her. The set of her spine. The hand that hadn't moved from the latch.

Something is wrong.

I almost said it. The words were right there at the back of my throat. But Seraphine had never wanted me to name her silences, only to leave room for them. And I was very good at leaving room.

"I'll be just outside," I said.

She nodded once.

I walked out.

---

I stood in the corridor for seven minutes.

I know because I counted. Because the bells were still marking quarter-hours and I had nothing to do but listen and wait and tell myself that she would open the door at any moment, that she was simply collecting herself, that Seraphine was many things but she was never late to something that mattered.

At seven minutes, I knocked.