That was the gift she had given me with her note — not just a warning about this family, but the ability to see a single wrist-grab for what it actually was: not an isolated loss of control, but the first visible inch of a very long and very deliberate path.

Most women don’t get to see the end of the road before they take the first step.

Yvaine had shown me.

And so where another woman might have felt the beginning of fear, I felt the click of a final piece sliding into place, because Percival had just documented, on my own skin, the truth Yvaine had risked everything to tell me.

The wedding would proceed.

Three hundred guests.