Nova's POV
Whatever was underground in the Enchanted Woods had been there for a long time.
Seraphine had said: yours. And then she had said she would explain fully when Nova was ready, and Nova had said she was ready, and Seraphine had looked at her with three centuries of patience and said not yet, but soon, and that had been yesterday.
Nova had spent the night deciding not to lose sleep over things that weren't moving.
She had mostly succeeded.
The council session was at nine.
She had been in six council sessions since the festival. She had spoken in all six briefly in the first, more in the second, and by the fourth Ryder had started arriving early to save her the chair to Thorne's immediate right rather than the observer's position at the table's edge where she'd initially been placed by someone's assumption about where she belonged.
Nobody had moved her chair back.
