Selah did not confront Yara.
She waited until the room was empty, until the pack was scattered across the festival and Soren was on the floor and nobody was watching her not sleep, and then she sat down with months of her own accounting and started at the beginning.
The rationing wasn't written anywhere.
It lived in her body and in her head, a running balance she'd carried so long she'd stopped noticing she was carrying it.
Every degree the pack drew off Soren, she tracked.
Every draw had a weight, and every weight had to be paid, and she'd built a schedule across the week so that no single day took more than the soul could make back by morning.
She had believed she was running it clean for all this time.
She wrote the six in her head.
Yara. Herself. Maren. Dani. Mona. Joan.
Then she stopped on the last name, because the last name had never once had a number.
◆◆◆◆
Joan cost nothing.
But Selah had never checked whether Joan was actually a zero.
