"I did become a disaster when I found out. It was weird." Bay ponders on the best explanation. "Everyone had been whispering about me since I was... six or seven. They looked at my mom and dad, at my brother. And me. My pale skin that didn't freckle, my dark hair. How little I looked like them, how different I was. So knowing I wasn't crazy? Fantastic. But I also got to see a whole life I didn't get, and my parents fawn over a girl who was everything I wasn't. And they were so mad she got sick and lost her hearing like that didn't just happen sometimes."

And that was the rub, wasn't it. Bay just described herself hearing, and Daphne as Deaf. That life she coveted, she got to have it. And she couldn't say one version was better or worse, she could just say what this version cost her wasn't worth what she gained. But if she'd never been her, maybe she would have been happy with it.

"We tried to spend Christmas together, it was our first Christmas as a weird blended family. My mom goes nuts over Christmas. Fifteen different cookies and a schedule planned to the minute of family cheer. My birth mother wants to have a relaxed Christmas eve, quick round of presents at noon, and sneak Chinese take-out into a movie." Bay shakes her head, it was such a stupid argument mostly because one mom was stubborn, and the other traditional to the point of stubborn. "So my sister and I kinda thought- we'd be better off if the switch never happened."

"And we got that." Bay gestures at her merely decorative ears. Yes, it didn't make sense. The universe doesn't give do-overs. And miracles don't happen. They were sitting on a stone wall outside an apothecary in a castle town where they lived, in a castle, full of mages. The universe did whatever it wanted.