Mira cried for eleven minutes.
Not from pain. Not from fear. From relief — the particular, full-body, soul-deep relief of a girl who'd spent seventeen years believing she was broken and was now being told by the one person in the world qualified to say it that she wasn't.
Valeria stood three feet from her on the seventh terrace, arms crossed, scarlet eyes steady, and waited for the crying to finish with the patience of someone who understood exactly what those tears meant because she'd cried the same tears in a different room at a different age and had sworn she'd never let anyone see.
"Done?" Valeria asked. Not unkindly.
Mira wiped her eyes. Nodded. Her Infernal signature — raw, unsealed, flickering with the erratic rhythm of power that didn't know its own shape yet — pulsed with the residual energy of emotional release.
"Good. We begin."
