Wind chimes jangled as Solene opened the door. She didn't have to pull out her key or use her unlocking spell—either Luna had already opened her office for business today, or she had a guest over. And based on the car in the driveway, an orange convertible with a little stained glass teapot charm hanging from the dash, she had a pretty good idea which one it was. 

Therefore, it didn't surprise her to see her mother in the living room, one of her records playing low, her best tea set out with the aroma of jasmine and citrus coming from the cup. 

Her mother's silvery-blonde hair that seemed to entrap moonlight itself curled over her shoulders and over the gentle sweetheart neckline of her seafoam green lace dress. Dark jewelry glittered with a sinister glamour from the rings on her finger, her earrings, and the stone on her choker. Most prominent was the crescent moon medallion that hung perfectly on the exposed pale skin of her collarbone. Her austere, elegant features were sentimental, shifted to something more approachable and even friendly rather than stoically aristocratic. 

Luna Danann didn't look that way often, these days.

Solene knew it was because of the man sitting across from her mother, the man who had claimed to be her father's best friend. 

He looked to her with his uncanny golden eyes and smiled. "Oh, hello Solene. Were you out at the beach again?"

"Yeah." Solene looked to her mother, ready for a challenge. "Sorry I'm late."

"Oh, don't be." She made a dismissive gesture, accentuated by her flowing sleeves. "It's the last day of summer vacation. Might as well spend as much time out there as you want."

Oh, so that's how you want to play it?

Solene straightened her back, lowered her shoulders, and raised her chin. "Well, I'm going upstairs to pack." 

"If you need any help, let us know." Horus raised a cup to his lips. 

Solene blinked. This had to be a ploy of some sort. She'd long suspected the two of them to be in cahoots. 

But it wasn't worth calling them out on it. Not this time. 

She said nothing and hurried up the wooden spiral staircase to the second floor. Only once she was on those stairs did she hear Horus and Luna continue their conversation in voices too hushed to fully comprehend from the stairwell. She would know—she'd tried a great many times since she was thirteen. 

Instead, she continued on to her room, her refuge when she wasn't at the beach throughout the summer. 

How many afternoons had she spent this summer alone, moving around furniture or plastering newspaper and magazine cuttings to her wall? She'd left the window open this morning to let in the seaside air. The taste of salt greeted her, along with the fluttering of the ethereal chiffon curtains over the window and her canopy bed. 

Upon entering, she tossed her beach basket to the side and headed towards the closet to remove her trunk—it was time to pack for another semester at the Anouir Institute. 

She started with the clothing rack she'd painted a baby pink in one such redecorating mania she'd experienced this summer. Working quickly, she folded her dresses, blouses, and skirts as neatly as she could. There was one advantage to packing so late, she supposed—there shouldn't be enough time for the clothes to develop wrinkles.

But even if they did, she knew all the household spells and charms that her own mother used to keep the house on Solana Boulevard perfect for all manner of visitor, business or friend. It was easy to cast a quick wrinkle-removal charm, faster than using an ironing board. 

Solene didn't often consider what her life would have been like if she weren't a witch. Mundane human life was so boring. It was an awful lot of waiting, and so much time spent on such monotonous tasks. But she'd be lying if she said that the thought hadn't crossed her mind a time or two.

After all, if her mother hadn't been a witch, one from such a prestigious lineage as the Danaans, then maybe her father's murder wouldn't have gone unnoticed. 

Once that was done, she moved on to the items in her dresser—and once those unmentionables were taken care of, it was onto the more practical items. A cauldron, tomes of spellbooks, a wand, a deck of cards, and a crystal ball. All very standard as far as witching equipment got these days. A range of conduits beyond what they'd likely need post-graduation—then they'd likely select whatever the best one was for whatever it was they chose to do. Horus preferred the cards, while her father had used a staff that was now locked away in the attic for safe-keeping.

Then there were those like her mother—a master of magic who rarely used any conduit beyond her alchemy, the line of gleaming potion bottles that lined the shelves of her office. 

Solene had taken after her in that respect—while a wand or crystal was appreciated, it was a pair of training wheels. Casting without a conduit—now that was something. That was when Solene could really feel the magic, the power that ran through her veins and danced under her skin. It hummed when she used a conduit—but it sang with her hands. 

Technically, it was a gift. One to be expected with such powerful witches for her parents—a father who was an upstart and a prodigy, and a mother with a pedigree that stretched back to the elves and the very founders of the Anouir Institute. 

But it was another similarity to Luna Danaan—something that Solene could not stand in the wake of that terrible morning when Solene woke up to a quiet house and lilacs in the backyard. 

For the same reason, when she caught a glance of herself in the vanity mirror, she disliked her aristocratic nose, the freckles around her eyes, and the place where her deep brown hair gave way to the silvery blonde of her mother's. 

Maybe disliked wasn't the right word. She supposed herself pretty, with such features. Her mother was beautiful, no one could deny that. And there was a time when she might have hoped to grow up like her mother—but to see her now within herself? 

It was only a reminder of the mystery she could never ask about, that she feared the answer to. 

A knock on the doorframe disrupted Solene's thoughts.

She should have supposed that thinking about someone was as good as a summoning circle. 

After all, it had clearly worked on Luna Danaan.

Her expression was indecipherable as she lingered in the threshold for a moment. Her deep gray eyes with circles of yellow like a ring around the moon carried a melancholy with them—they had ever since Solene was born. They always seemed sadder, though, when they fell upon her. 

"Mother—do you need something?" She tensed.

"Oh, your aunt called, she'll be here tonight—I thought you might want to know." Her eyes flicked toward the open trunk. "You're making good time."

Solene shrugged. "I just need to put in a few of the personal items. Then I'll be ready to go."

Luna drifted into the room. Her seafoam dress fluttered like the chiffon curtains as she approached one of the bookshelves, the one with an entire row of frilly teddy bears sitting neatly upon it. 

"Not taking any of the Marvelous Magical Land books with you?" Luna sounded surprised. 

"I just hadn't gotten around to those yet." Solene's hands curled into fists at her side. She couldn't forget who she was dealing with. 

"Oh, and The Unicorn of the Lost Woods—" Luna pulled the book off the shelf, with the cover showing a beautiful white-haired princess in a violet dress sitting in front of a unicorn. "Do you remember when I used to read this one to you? Or Princess Rosa of the Eventide Realm?" 

She pulled another book off the shelf and flicked through the pages with a wistful expression. 

Solene hated the tugging on her heartstrings, the reminder in every gesture, every sad look that her mother did in fact care about her. That was what made every interaction a battle, another skirmish in the war that had built over the course of the past four years. She couldn't forget what she was so sure her mother had done. What Horus had helped her cover up. 

"You have a fierce look on your face." 

Solene looked back to see that her mother had shelved the books once more, putting them back in their place as if she'd never been there. As if she were just as much a ghost as her silvery blonde hair and ethereal layers suggested. Never mind the real phantom between them. 

It was in moments like these that if Solene could just open her mouth, she could ask, she would finally know—

Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?
But her throat went dry and threatened to close. Her mouth might open, but she could not move her lips, could not give voice to those terrible words, the horrible accusation.

Because she didn't know why her mother killed her father. 

She couldn't prove it, and the Covenant had already proved that they would look the other way. 

Luna Danaan had loved Julien Frey. 

Solene knew that. She knew it in the way that her mother would watch her father with those sad eyes, she knew it in the way her mother always insisted on leaving an extra plate of pesto chicken in the kitchen for him on the days he insisted he wasn't hungry, the way that her mother always reached for him. 

And Julien Frey had been impossibly devoted to Luna Danaan. 

So the motive was missing, the reason that a couple so in love could end in violence swept under the table. 

"What's wrong?" Luna sounded a thousand miles away, even as she came closer, as she swept a lock of hair out of Solene's face.

Solene's heart pounded. She was burning to ask, to know the truth.

But she couldn't.

She avoided her mother's eyes. "Nothing. I was just thinking about. . . stuff."

"I see." Luna's voice tightened. 

She pulled away, and Solene closed her eyes. She expected for Luna to disappear, to go out the door, to give her space as she so often did.

Instead, when she opened her eyes, she saw Luna returning to her from her bed. She pressed into Solene's hands a small stuffed deer made of a patchwork of different brown floral cottons and a dragon with celestial fabrics of ivory, gold, and deep azure. 

Solene's throat seized when she saw them.

Luna and Horus had made them for her, back when Luna had been pregnant with her. They were her first toys, her first companions. Luna and Horus had both told her at different times about it, how in the boredom of bedrest that had overtaken Luna towards the end of it, they'd made the stuffed animals to keep their hands and minds busy. 

"Faline and Mr. Snuffles should go with you to Anouir." Luna smiled. "I think they'd be lonely without you here."

Before Solene could reply, Luna vanished in whirlwind of gauzy fabric. That left Solene to sink into the pink carpet with the sunburst and crescent moon pattern and weep.