Bren tries to understand it, she really, truly does, but yesterday she had a brother and today she doesn't. He isn't dead. He isn't gone. He's just supposed to not have ever been at all, which is impossible. She knows he was here. She touched him. He was just starting to be big enough to kick and laugh when she played with him. He was Graced, she's sure of it, because his eyes used to be blue like hers and then they went purple a few days before he disappeared. She'd been really looking forward to finding out what his Grace would be. It seemed like a neat thing, to have a Graceling brother, especially if he'd turned out useful. Cookies weren't going to steal themselves.

The grownups are talking in quick, hushed whispers downstairs, but if she sits on the top of the steps she can nearly hear what they're saying. They sound worried. Mama is crying, she thinks. Bren figures she'd cry, too, if her baby had never existed even when he had.