[b]Adila![/b]

A hand, gentle. A legacy, observed. The Captain stands with you, Adila. She’s there, leaning on her walking-stick, and she’s resting her hand on your wing.

“You did good, Adila,” she says. That’s... it’s equivalent to her setting off fireworks and throwing you a parade.

“You’re still a princess to me,” Juniper Blue pipes up, on the other side of you. Like that’s what is breaking your heart! The idea that you might no longer be a princess, not that your family has just officially been dissolved, its ultimate purpose fulfilled.

***

[b]Kazelia![/b]

“How should she know?” Azora’s tone is clipped and frosty. Of course she’s prickling; she was the one who was always [i]winning.[/i] It’s only natural she’d be upset by the idea of having the board leveled. Might as well kick her last remaining footstool out from under her. “She lost the one thing that made her special.

Ninian cringes and clamps down on her answer. Instead she lowers her head and shovels peppered egg into her mouth. Azora looks at you, frostily, right in your star-streaked eyes.

“Why didn’t your eyes change?” It’s as much accusation as question. And... oh. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t [i]know.[/i] You admitted that you let Mother into your heart back during Eupheria’s invasive introductions, but she hasn’t let herself come to terms with what that means. She doesn’t know why your Mother accepted your heart, and she doesn’t know how much you’ve grown since you left home.

***

[b]Alina![/b]

Euphie makes them with fruit! It’s anyone’s guess which one you’ll bite into; she mixed a bunch of them into the batter, berries and diced apples and lemons and peaches and strawberries! Most of the bites, it works. Sometimes, the flavor’s odd and off-kilter: like her, not sitting down, flitting around the table and trying to deal with the uncertainty of not being able to command you to say how you felt about them.

“Eupheria,” Momma tries, and gets drowned under a wave of “no no it’s fine just tell me what you think aren’t they just so sweet and I wanted the flavor to be kind of you know voom wow kaboosh and I haven’t done this in like forever but how hard is it to make pancakes like really they’re impossible to mess up I didn’t mess up right?”

Without Caddy, she’s not the ringmaster anymore. She’s a desperate clown with a mouth full of patter and a heart full of need.