After the Long Night, the Elven Family Lost Me

In an elven family, a silver leaf from the ancestral tree is engraved with a child's name at their coming-of-age and given to them to keep. Aelira's grandmother once promised the leaf would always remember her. But on the night before her ceremony, the family brings out the silver leaf, and the name on it is Lirien's.

Her mother Sylvia pins the leaf on Lirien, her father Aslan raises a toast, her brother Kaelan drapes a Royal Court Academy robe over Lirien's shoulders, and her fiancé Elian shields her from the crowd. No one asks what Aelira received. When she protests, they tell her she can fight for everything herself, while Lirien has only them.

Aelira holds an appointment to a seven-year survey in the ancient tree plague zone. She presses her thumbprint to the confirmation line, locking her departure in twenty days. As the hall celebrates Lirien's new life, Aelira has already chosen the day she will leave.