“Please let her stay,” Brigid said. “I’d like the company.”
Nanette pursed her lips. She cast a quick look at me, scanning me from head to toe. I met her gaze steadily. I knew what she was thinking. Gareth had interrupted that afternoon’s trip to the Old Country, but there had been many others, and Nanette had discreetly patched me up after several of them.
I dreaded the day when she decided that she didn’t like me quite enough to continue lying for me.
“Very well,” Nanette said at last. “But I don’t approve of this, and I’ll only allow you to stay for an hour. Once I’m back from tending tothe librarians,” she added, pointing sternly at me, “you’ll leave without a word of protest. Not a single word.”
“The librarians?” I felt a thrill of nerves at the innocuous word, which had never once in my life thrilled me. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Professor Fontaine has requested that they all be examined daily,” Nanette replied. “The materials they’re working with are volatile, he says. He wants me to look out for signs of strange illnesses.” She scoffed, briskly gathering supplies from her shelves. “Strange illnesses. As if they won’t get enough of those just being here in the Mistlands. And as if I don’t already have enough to do these days. But he insisted. What a menace that man is. It’s a good thing he’s so handsome, otherwise someone would have beaten the lights out of him a long time ago, I’m sure.”
Nanette hurried toward the door and stopped at the threshold to look back at me. “One hour,” she said, and then she was gone.
Brigid broke the silence. She had always been braver than me and better in every way I could think of.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “You look awful.”
I quickly took stock of her. The gash on her cheek had been stitched closed and was already fading. Her face was bruised brown and blue, but her nose looked straight, no longer broken. My heart sank at the sight of her wounds, but I made myself look at them anyway. “I’m fine.”
“You ran off earlier. No one could catch up with you. Cira couldn’t find you. Where did you go?”
I tried to smile. “I’m glad to know my speed records are safe for now.”
But Brigid wasn’t amused. She knew my deflection strategies far too well. “Mara.”
“Don’t press me on this,” I said. “Please. I can’t talk about it. Not right now.”
Brigid watched me for a long moment. “Fine. I won’t. But I’m nothappy about it. And I could change my mind at any moment, at which point I’ll pester you mercilessly until you break.”
My mind provided an image of my body shattering, cleaved in two by some merciful villain. It would take something like that, I thought numbly, for me to actually die. Every wound I’d ever sustained, even mortal ones, had healed. Every broken bone repaired, every lost drop of blood restored.
“I’ll never break,” I said quietly. “Not really.”
“You’re still human, Mara. Even with that sentinel blood of yours.”
A confession danced on my tongue. In the wake of everything that had happened that day, I longed with a sudden ferocity to tell her, to tell someone:My mother is the goddess Kerezen. Brigid would think it was some kind of strange joke and take a jab at my odd sense of humor.
“I’m so sorry about earlier,” I said instead. “That’s what I came here to say.”
Brigid nodded in thanks. “No lasting harm done. Nanette patched me up quite nicely.”
“I’m glad.” I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Brigid, I don’t know if I could have gotten through all these years without you. It terrifies me that even with all of my training, I could lose control against you of all people.”
“I just look at it as a sign that we’ve crossed over from the realm of friendship to that of real sisterhood,” Brigid said. “Only around family can you truly be yourself.”
That stung. I lifted my gaze to hers. “That isn’t my true self. What I did to you today. That isn’t me.”
But it was, wasn’t it? Even the shape of the words felt wrong on my tongue.You’re right, Brigid, is what I should have said.I am indeed a monster. A monster with a god’s blood in her veins. A monster who torments perfectly kind librarians and seeks out pain the way others seek out love.
Something of my thoughts must have shown on my face. Brigid softened. “I was only teasing,” she said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. Do you want to talk about anything? About Sablemire?”
“I can’t think of anything I want to talk about less. Can I just sit here with you until Nanette returns? I’m so tired.”
“Of course,” she said, making room on the narrow cot. “But if you fall asleep with your mouth open, I’ll kick you out.”
I sat down beside her and nudged her gingerly with my elbow, feeling so grateful for her that I found it difficult to speak. “What about all that talk of family and real sisterhood?”
Brigid picked up her book with a smile. “That only applies until you start snoring.”
