It was bloodstained and limp. When I touched the prayer, I felt a shock of frost, as if it had been buried in hard winter ground. It unfolded in my hands, exposing a crooked, desperate line. Matilda, help me. I inhaled sharply. No one had written a prayer to me before, and the revelation struck me like a hand: All the prayers I had just burned? They were not for Zenia, but for me. I fell to my knees, desperate to reclaim them.
