She holds perfectly still, fingers steepled in her lap. The air sings on her skin; she's always loved the feeling of a freshly-shorn scalp, and the infinite tenderness of Gideon touching her ear is shattering.

Pelleamena Novenarius's hands are always cold. In Harrow's memories, her father is a voice; her mother is a pair of hands, cold and somehow flinching from her skin. The blade scraping her scalp clean; the needle piercing her ears. It was her mother's hands on hers that showed her how to twist the rope.

There is more kindness in Gideon's touch right now than Pelleamena the Ninth showed in a decade. To her wonder, Harrow doesn't cry; in place of the tight, clotted feeling in her chest she expected, she feels only warmth flowing down from her scalp.