Chapter Three

The next morning, I filed my withdrawal from the Blackwood Mayfair clan with the elder council. The clerk was young and visibly uncomfortable. He checked my identification twice and then checked it again.

"Miss Worthington," he said carefully. "You're aware that once this is processed—"

"Yes."

"And you're certain—"

"Yes."

He stamped the form.

In the same hour, I submitted my application to the Lunar Heritage Society for an overseas field deployment. I had done two years of Society fieldwork in my twenties. I knew how it worked. More importantly, I knew they didn't ask questions about why you were leaving, only whether you were qualified to go.

Two quiet forms. Two quiet signatures. Two quiet ends to a life I had been building for seven years.

Then I went home and found the photograph album.

It was on the shelf above my desk — thick leather cover, worn at the corners, stuffed with seven years of images. He had kept a running note inside the back cover. Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine reasons. He had written it as a joke, early on, when we were young and he thought grand gestures were the same as love.

I built a fire in the courtyard.

I fed the album into it page by page. His handwriting curled and blackened. The photographs went last — chronological, the way I had arranged them. I watched them all go. I felt nothing, which told me exactly how long I had already been done.

My phone buzzed while the last pages were still burning.

Aiden.

I stared at it for one ring. Then I answered.

"Your moonstone pendant is here," he said, without preamble. Not are you all right. Not I need to talk to you. "When do you want to collect it?"

"Leave it," I said. "I'll deal with it later."

Silence. Long enough that I thought he'd said everything. Then:

"She's not doing well." His voice shifted — careful, deliberate. "Lily. Since everything that happened, she's been struggling. Her emotional state is concerning. If you could find a way to speak with her — even briefly — it might help settle things considerably."

I looked at the last curling fragment of paper in the fire.

"She has an entire pack devoted to her wellbeing," I said. "And you. And the elder council. And approximately a dozen other people who have rearranged their lives around her comfort." I watched the ember blacken. "Isn't that enough?"

"Serena—"

I hung up.

I stood by the cooling fire for a moment, then turned back to the desk — and there it was. The moonstone pendant. Sitting at the edge where it had been since the night I took it off.

I picked it up. The front was familiar — a pale crescent moon, smooth and cool in my palm, the one he had clasped around my neck himself. I turned it over.

Engraved on the back, in letters so small I'd never once thought to look: For Lily. Love always.

I stood very still.

Then I started to laugh.

It wasn't a good laugh. It kept going longer than it should have, and somewhere in the middle of it my eyes began to sting, and I had to press my knuckles against my mouth to keep the sound from changing into something else. He had given her a matching one. Or perhaps — and this was the part that made the laugh go sideways — perhaps there had never been two. Perhaps there had only ever been one, and the one I had been wearing for three years had always carried the wrong name.

I set it carefully back on the desk's edge. I did not cry. I refused to give it that.

At midnight, the link stirred.

My lady. My senior sentinel's voice was quiet and careful. The surgeon is ready. We can proceed at first light.

"Good," I said.

I looked at the pendant one more time. Then I turned off the light and went to pack the last of my things.

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