Get yourself together. You’ll have the rest of your lonely life for crying, eejit.
Right. Sure. Easy.
Fuck.
“What do I need to do?”
“Nothing in particular,” Lunara answered, swallowing. “Just stay close and keep a hand on me. I’m going to tie a thread of my power to you, and pray to the Sisters it doesn’t backfire. If it does, just get yourself and Nyri out of here, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere, and you can’t make me.”
Lunara’s head snapped up, Nyri on the other side of Fern’s slab.
“Nyri, no! Shoo!”
“Why doessheget to be the tether?” Nyri grumbled. “I’d make an excellent tether. You’d hardly even know I was here!”
“Absolutely fucking?—”
“What if you used both of us?”
“—not.” She spun on Hedda. “Are you actually out of your stars-damned mind? Did it get scrambled the last time you had to wrench me away from Fern? Or was it the first time?” She stuck an admonishing finger out at Nyri. “No. Um… no, again. And… Oh, look! Still no!”
“Lunara.”
She shuffled back, pressing shaky hands to her clammy cheeks. “Everyone in this whole place has gone mad. I’ve been worried about myself, when I should’ve been worried about the rest ofyouall along!”
“We haven’t gone mad, Lunara,” Nyri said softly. “We trust you. There’s a difference.”
Andtherewere the waterworks she’d been trying to suppress.
“You saved Bal. You saved her.” She pointed to Fern. “And Hedda told me what you did in the chasm and after. I know you won’t hurt us. You need to start believing it yourself.”
Lunara scoffed, angrily swiping her tears away. “Believing it? You know what I am. I?—”
Hedda reached out and gripped her upper arms. “We knowwhoyou are. Everything else is just stations and titles.”
“No. A title, I could live with. The others… They wentinsane. Had to bekilled. And I’m one of them. I won’t have your blood on my hands. I can’t?—”
“Oy! How many of the other Keepers were handed Illamiata as children? How many of them were pampered, spoiled Elder Tier Sorcerit without a worry in the world? How many were given free rein because no one cared what they did with it as long as they carried out their sacred duty and delivered power to the Evesong?”
Lunara’s spiraling mind screeched to a halt. “How the fuck do you know all of that?”
“It’s my job to know things like that. I’m not just a gorgeous Demon with a wicked axe hand, you know.” She gave a little squeeze, her voice quieter when she said, “How many, Lunara?”
She’d never thought about it like that. Had never considered that upbringing and mindset could play a part in a Keeper’s ultimate outcome.
No, no, no. Don’t start getting ideas. No.
“A-all of them,” she finally answered, a little dazed.
“Exactly. And you are none of those things. That hurt you carry around—it’s as much a tool as it is an injury, Lunara. You can either let yourself bleed out, or you can use it. Let it be yourfailsafe. Let it bolster you. You won’t allow Illamiata to do to you what it did to them, and you won’t hurt us. I know it. She knows it.” She bent closer, almost nose-to-nose with her. “We all know it, except for you.”
“Trust us,” Nyri said, rounding the slab and wrapping her arms around Lunara’s waist. “Hedda was there when you found her. I’ve kept watch over her. We care almost as much as you do. Let us help.”
Don’t fall for their pretty speeches. You don’t need them. You don’t need help. You’re enough on your own.
She wasn’t though, was she? If she’d been enough, Fern would have been free of the shadows and flitting around by now.
