I had thought, in the days before, that I would feel triumphant crossing that floor — that after six years of shrinking I would finally stand at my full height in front of everyone who had ever watched me make myself small at Gavin’s side, and that it would feel like victory.

It did not feel like victory.

It felt like weight.

Every step across that ballroom was a step out of a costume I had worn so long it had grown into my skin, and pulling free of it hurt in a way I had not expected.

Because the small, quiet, agreeable wife I had played for six years was not entirely a lie.

She was a real part of me, a part I had fed and dressed and sent out every day, and walking into that room as the other woman — the auditor, my father’s daughter, the one who could not be dismissed — meant leaving her behind on the floor forever, and I mourned her a little even as I stepped past her.