Luke’s eyes dropped to her throat, to where her hand, without permission, had started fidgeting with her necklace. She let go immediately, dropping the pendant beneath the neckline of her jumper, but he’d already seen it. “Was that a swan?”

It wasn’t the first time Sera had wanted to throw her necklace in the bin. It also wasn’t the first time she knew she wouldn’t. “It is my name.”

“Why are you wearing your name around your neck? Are you thirteen?”

“I’ll answer that when you tell me why you’re still here.”

Silence.

“I didn’t think so,” said Sera.

She took her tea outside and found a perch on the edge of one of the raised herb beds, setting her steaming cup down beside her.

Cross-legged, chin propped on her fists, she breathed in the lavender, rosemary, and hollyhocks and absently watched Posy assess the shape and quality of one of Matilda’s cabbages.

She became aware that Luke had followed her out. He stood at the opposite end of the herb bed, his eyes on his sister, the rigid, unbending lines of his shoulders positively screaming at her to keep her distance.

And then, unexpectedly, he said, “My mother didn’t think it was a good idea to take Posy home.”

“Is something wrong?”

“With our parents? As in, are they both gravely ill and concerned they won’t be able to care for their own child at this exact moment? No. They’re fine.”

“How long has it been since Posy was home?”

“About a month.”

“I see.” Sera’s mind flashed to Theo standing at the edge of the room in his parents’ home, trying to make himself as small and unthreatening as possible. She clenched her jaw. “What happened?”

“Posy doesn’t hide her magic. If she wants to use it, she does.” Luke’s voice was perfectly, painstakingly level. “There’d been awkward questions from the staff at her school, so I took her to the Guild. It wasn’t right for her. They were fine with the magic part, but…”

Sera could guess. “They were fine with the magic part, but not the rest of her?”

“More or less.”

“What would have happened if you had gone back to Edinburgh last night?”

“Nothing. It’s not like our parents would have kicked us out.

I could take Posy back right now if I really wanted, but after that, as our mother took great pains to explain on the phone an hour ago, they’d have no choice but to pull her out of school and keep her away from other people until she learns to hide her magic.

One of our parents would have to quit work and stay home with her.

” Luke’s voice was a sea in outer space, miles and miles of frozen, unforgiving desolation.

“It would be the easiest way to keep her safe, but they’d hate it.

She’d hate it. So she’s staying with me for now.

Our mother assures me we’re more than welcome to visit, though. ”

“Big of her,” said Sera.

Luke cracked a smile. “Your turn.”

With an enormously martyred air, Sera tugged her necklace out from under her jumper.

The pendant was a small crystal swan, each clear facet refracting a rainbow of light, its wings outstretched in flight.

“After the resurrection spell,” she said, “when Albert exiled me, he gave me this big speech about how he was still the powerful descendant of an old and distinguished magical family, whereas I was nothing but a swan who had clipped her own wings.”

Luke looked at her for the first time. “Sounds exactly like him.”

“To my great and enduring irritation, it got to me,” Sera went on, with a fearsome glower. “Then, a few weeks later, I was in this dusty, poky charity shop and I found this.”

She extended the chain away from her neck, as far as it would go, so he could see the pendant properly. It was hard to tell unless you looked very closely, but there was a hairline fracture down one wing where someone had broken the swan and mended it again.

“It’s silly, but it was the thing I needed at exactly the moment I needed it. When I put it on, it felt like I was saying fuck you, I can still fly .”

Luke looked at the pendant for a long time before saying, “No. It’s not silly.”

“Well, silly or not, I don’t know how true it was. I’m not the girl I was. I’ll never be her again.”

And that, Sera felt, was quite enough truth-telling for one day.

Before Luke could say anything, she asked, abruptly, “What are you going to do if taking Posy home is out of the question for now?”

“I don’t know yet.” He looked away. “Don’t worry, we won’t stay long. My flat in Edinburgh’s tiny, so Posy can’t live there with me, but as soon as I find somewhere bigger—”

“You can stay as long as you need to.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m not saying it again,” Sera said, immediately ruffling the pointy, spiky ends of her feathers. “You need time to find somewhere new. Make a plan. Whatever. I’m giving you that time. So stay. For fuck’s sake.”

The corner of Luke’s mouth twitched. No, that was an understatement. It quivered .

Sera scowled. “Yes, yes, I’m an intolerable grump. A belligerent harpy. A cantankerous shrew. Well, too bad. If you wanted someone warm and welcoming and snuggly, you should really have had this conversation with Jasmine instead.”

Luke’s first laugh was a rusty, startled sound. Then he kept laughing.

Sera was furious. She had (mostly) been able to avoid noticing how (very, very) attractive Luke was, but now he was laughing (at her!

The nerve!), and as if that weren’t enough, the sun had decided this was the very moment to sally forth from behind the clouds and halo him in gold like he was a fucking archangel or something. It was unacceptable.

He was still laughing.

Sera drank her tea in wrathful silence.