We held onto each other in the middle of that ruined reception, two women who had been strangers a few weeks before, and I understood that whatever else the Pembrooks had cost me — a man I’d loved, or thought I had, a future I’d imagined, the strange grief of a wedding that was really an execution — they had also given me this, which I would not trade back.

Yvaine and I were bound now in a way that has no ordinary name.

She had risked everything to warn a stranger, and the stranger had come back, and between the two of us we had done what neither could have done alone.

She had the knowledge and the access and the unbearable courage of the note; I had the exit, the resources, the lawyer, the plan.

Neither of us could have brought the Pembrooks down by herself.

She would have stayed trapped forever, guarding her father, guarding her silence.