She picked up a pastry and took a bite she didn't taste.
Ember wiped her hands on her apron, came around the counter, and sat across from her in the booth. "I remember what it felt like to have the exit in my hand." Ember's voice was quiet. Steady. "The validation. The proof that I was worth something outside of this place. It tasted like freedom right until I realized I was running from the first place that had ever felt like mine."
Phoebe's fingers tightened on the mug.
"I'm not going to say stay." Ember leaned forward, elbows on the table, her dark eyes direct and warm, and uncompromising. "I'm going to say, make sure you're leaving for the right reasons. And not because staying scares you more."
Phoebe opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Ember reached across the table and took her hand. Just held it. Warm and flour-dusted, and uncomplicated.
Phoebe held on.
Her apartment was nearly empty.
Phoebe folded a sequined performance dress into tissue paper and placed it in the travel case on her bed.
She'd performed her remaining shows for the last week on pure technical precision. She'd been onstage since she was five years old, and could deliver a flawless set in her sleep, in a coma, from the bottom of the ocean. The audiences loved it. Standing ovations every night. The alien harmonic hum swelling beneath her final notes. Beings pressing forward to the stage with their faces lit up and their hands reaching.
They couldn't tell the difference between her performance voice and her real one.
She used to be grateful for that. Now she hated that they couldn’t tell the difference.
The books went into the case next. Then the small things she'd accumulated without meaning to. A festival program from opening night, its cover bent from being shoved into her coat pocket while Thorne walked beside her in the dark. A peppermint tea sachet she'd taken from the all-night stall because it smelled like him, tucked into the inner pocket of her coat like a teenager hiding a love note.
She wasn't going to think about that.
The cashmere sweater. The wine-dark one she'd worn the morning he'd brought her coffee barefoot in his hallway, his hair mussed from the couch, his eyes still soft from sleep. She held it for a second longer than she needed to. Folded it. Put it in the case.
Her quarters looked like what they were. A temporary space being vacated by a temporary person.
The dream she'd organized her whole life around was finally in her hands, and it tasted like ash.
She closed the case.
She stood in the center of it and looked at what was left. Suitcases lined up by the door. Walls bare. The vanity cleared of everything except her hairbrush, sitting in the exact spot where Thorne's frost had crawled across the glass in protective fury.
She picked up the hairbrush. Put it in the case. Closed the clasp.
Through the window, the Eternal Pine pulsed slow and gold against the darkening sky. The three moons had risen over the market lane, hanging at different heights like three eyes watching, and the vanilla snow caught their light. Evergleam in the blue hour. The most beautiful thing she'd ever seen froma window, and she was going to be on the other side of it in eighteen hours.
A knock came at the door.
Ember, probably. Coming to check on her one more time. Or bringing more pastries she didn't ask for.
Ember had been in and out with trays all afternoon, and after the third visit, Phoebe had gotten tired of unlocking it and just left it unlocked.
"Door's still open," she called. "Come on in."
The door opened. Closed.
Footsteps on the floor that were not Ember's quick, light tread. Heavier. Unhurried.
Phoebe turned.
Gavin Hale stood in her doorway with a duffel bag over his shoulder. His face wore the same warm, certain smile he'd worn on the bench in the festival square when he'd held her hand and told her he was her Truest Listener.
Her blood went cold.
