Chapter 25: Eighteen Years

I hadn't slept, because my grandfather's heart monitor had kept beeping in my ears, slow and steady, all night.

My hands had stopped glowing hours ago, and I kept looking at them anyway.

I came down to the lodge kitchen at five in the morning for water, and Carys was sitting at the table.

She had on a man's canvas coat and a pair of muddy boots that didn't match.

Her hair was tied back with a bootlace.

There was a bruise across her left cheekbone, yellow at the edges.

I stopped in the doorway with the glass in my hand.

"Don't shout," she said. "Please. I've got five minutes, and then you can do whatever you want with me."

"Where have you been?"

"The boathouse loft. Nobody looks at a loft full of life jackets twice."

"I looked."

"You looked once."

I put the glass down on the counter very carefully, because I wanted to throw it.

"Eighteen years," I said. "You hugged me at the airport. You fixed my scarf."

"I know."

"You put a dead woman's dress on your body and walked into a room full of her family."

"I know that too."

She didn't cry.

I had expected her to cry, and I was ready to hate it.

She just sat there with her hands flat on the table, looking at the grain of the wood.

"Rafe did that to my face," she said. "Two nights ago, after the feast. I told him it was over and I wasn't going back to the compound."

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