“And when she grows old enough to ask questions?” She waves the necklace at me. “If she realizes you’ve been hiding her from herself? What then?”
I shrug. “She’ll hate me, no doubt.”
At least she’ll have lived.
“And you’re okay with that ...” She speaks slowly, as though choosing her words with care.
“Her hate is the only thing I’ll accept. That, andthis,” I hiss, waving the goblet through the air.
Mersi’s gaze drops to her feet, a tension-filled silence strung between us.
“I’ll protect her. Give her the tools to protect herself. I’ll be her fucking storm if I have to. She’ll want for nothing—always.I can do all that without being involved.”
Mersi looks me right in the eye, fierce and brazen. “Everything is nothing if you’re in pieces, High Master. I think that’s something even you can understand.”
She spins on her heel before I have a chance to reply, black skirt swaying as she stalks toward the tower’s entrance, pausing a few steps from the door. Glancing back, her voice is fractured as she says, “She hides beneath furniture. Veers from the sun. Thrashes and digs her nails into my arms when I try to coax her out for a play in the grass.” Her face twists, words sharpen. “She won’t draw or smile or dance like a normal child her age.”
“Mersi—”
“Her tears no longer sparkle like they used to.”
I suck a breath and blow it out, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“I’m no medis, but she seems determined to follow the rest of her family to an early grave.”
The words are a sword through my sternum, and it’s an effort not to fold forward and vomit.
“You don’t wrap a wound without treating it first. It’ll do nothing butfester.” She shakes the necklace at me, pendant swinging. “You can’t protect her from herself.”
With that, she disappears up the tower’s stairwell, the echo of her footsteps attacking me as I chew on her words.
Choke on them.
Mersi’s right, of course. I can’t protect her from herself.
But I can try.
Adomed shell of lucent crystal shields us from the haunting eddy that keeps slashing.
Slashing.
The beasts kick up dirt and pulsing red embers every time their powerful paws assault the frosty soil—leverage for their frenzied attack on the dome.As much as it’s protecting us, I feel ittakingfrom me. Little sips that turn my blood thick and cold.
My brother shivers in my lap, burrowing deeper with every ear-blasting blow.
They can’t have him.
I tighten my arms around him, bury my nose into his whitewash hair, and close my eyes, savoring the smells of paint and spice and a hint of toffee apples. Smells that stuff my chest with warm love and conjure up visions of chiming giggles and half-moon smiles. Of familiar rooms decorated with a patchwork of vibrant pictures stuck to stone.
Home.
I want to stay with the image and never leave …
A dense thud. A hiss of breath.
I open my eyes to see a fat, stubby nose slick with moisture pressed against the crystal, fogging it with a violent chuff.
Slowly, I reach out my trembling hand, brush the dome’s smooth interior, and gasp at the sudden, gulping tug that comes from deep inside my chest. I flatten my palm, splay my fingers, and peer at the beast through the gullies between them.
