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“You wanted me yesterday,” I say feebly, starting to feel foolish and helpless, heat creeping up my cheeks.

“I did.”

“You wanted me enough to risk your position and your work and whatever else you’ve got stacked up against the fact of me.”

“I don’t deny that.”

“Then what has changed since yesterday that would make you walk this back?”

He opens his mouth and shuts it again.

“It isn’t safe,” he says.

“What isn’t safe?”

He doesn’t answer.

“What isn’t safe, Baz?”

“You’re not safe for me,” he says. “You’ll be terrible for my career. I have things to care about other than you and that’s the main one. It takes precedence over you.” He pauses and in that pause I feel like my entire world is shaking at the core. “You are not the priority you seem to think you are.”

I let out a shaking breath, the small coil in me that had been tightening all this time is now coming apart in a different direction, and I’m going to cry if I stay in this room much longer, and I’m not going to cry in front of him.

“Fine,” I say, raising my chin. He may be a boxer at heart but I know when to leave the ring. “I won’t come to you again.”

He flinches, just a little, but says, “Good.”

The word feels like a slap to the face.

He must hear himself, or see the look on my face, because he adds in a soft voice, “That’s what I need from you.”

“Then that’s all you’ll get,” I tell him, spinning around.

I march out of the crypt, slamming the door behind me hard enough that I hear bones rattle, and I make it up the stairs to the ramps and then all the way back to my room. It isn’t until the door is closed behind me that I finally break down and cry.

I cry for a while, standing against the door with my hand pressed over my mouth. I cry hard enough that my ribs hurt and my face is hot and I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor against it with my knees up and my forehead on my knees, and I let it come out of me in waves. I know I’m not just crying about Baz, I’m crying over the loss of my sister and father, I’m crying over the loss of my identity the longer I stay here and have to pretend I’m not what I am, and I’m crying over the impending grief of losing my mother.

It’s that last one that I think I’ve been too afraid to face, the fact that I’ve already lost my mother, that the person she was is never coming back and one day she’ll die too. I’m grieving her as she’s alive and anticipating the grief yet to come and I don’t know how to make either feeling go away. I just want to go back to the way things were before, when it was the four of us in the cottage, those evenings by the fire where I would sew and my father would play the fiddle with Morena requesting song after song, and my mother would pour tea and feed us all biscuits. In those ordinary moments, I never knew how good I had it. I never knew to take every simple moment in and let it sit within me and savor it like fine wine. I took it for granted.

I’ve taken so much for granted, including Baz.

When I’m done, I’m still sitting on the floor and though the pain in my chest hasn’t eased, and my head is pounding, I do feel a little lighter, like I’ve been carrying a heavy weight for far too long.

I get up slowly. I wash my face in the basin and I don’t dare look at my reflection, because she will look nothing like I did this morning, this morning when everything seemed so possible. I take off my boots and lie down on top of the bed and stare at the beam over the bed where the moth usually sits.

The moth isn’t there.

I sit up and peer at the beam closer, then around the room.

The moth isn’t anywhere to be found.

Something crumbles again inside me. I can’t lose the moth. I’ve lost too much already, I can’t bear to lose that little creature, that constant companion.

“Beetle?” I call out softly, hoping the shiny green insect is still around.

But there is only silence.

Chapter