Lily's voice, when it finally came, was barely more than a fragile whisper, shaking with years of buried grief and desperate, aching hope. "Happy birthday, sister," she said, the words trembling but unmistakably clear in the sudden hush that had fallen over the nearby guests. Victoria's entire body went rigid, the words landing with an impact far more devastating than any physical blow could have delivered. "What did you just call me?" she asked, her voice barely audible, disbelief and dawning horror tangling together in her wide, tear-filling eyes. Lily nodded slowly, more tears spilling down her bruised cheeks, her hands trembling as she reached up instinctively, as though desperate to close the distance between them despite everything that had just happened. "It's me," she whispered, her voice cracking further under the weight of seventeen years of separation finally breaking loose all at once. "It's Lily." Victoria felt the ground shift beneath her, her mind racing frantically backward through years of grief, through a childhood memory of a sister who'd vanished during a car accident that had claimed, she'd always been told, both her sister and the driver who'd been responsible for them that terrible night. She'd mourned Lily for nearly two decades, had grown up believing her sister was gone forever, had built an entire life around that devastating loss. And now, standing in the middle of her own birthday gala, the young maid she'd just struck across the face was staring back at her with the exact same eyes she remembered from countless childhood photographs, the same eyes she'd searched for in every stranger's face for years without ever daring to hope she might actually find them again.