Semua Bab His Contract Luna Says Goodbye : Bab 91 - Bab 100

ELLARIA.Tatum was quieter than usual in the bath.I sat on the edge of the tub and tried to get him to blow bubbles the way he usually did and he looked at the water instead. I didn’t push. I just stayed there with him until he was done and wrapped him in his towel and tried to make it silly the way I sometimes did, pulling the corner of it over his head like a hood and telling him he looked like a very small monk.He smiled.It was small and polite and not quite real.I got him dressed and tucked him in and sat at the corner of his bed and looked at him and tried to figure out what came next.But my little boy beat me to it.“Why did you keep him a secret?”I looked at my hands in my lap for a moment.The question sat in the air between us and I felt the full weight of it pressing down on my chest. He deserved an answer. He’d always deserved an answer. And the truth in fact.I just hadn’t been ready to give it to him and now the choice had been taken from me entirely.“Because som

ELLARIA. Tatum had barely touched his pancakes. I came out of his bedroom with the plate in my hand and made my way back to the kitchen where Mirela was on her third cup of coffee. She looked up when she heard me coming. “How’s he faring?” I rubbed my forehead. “Still not keeping anything down.” I took the plate to the sink and stood there for a moment thinking about the morning. He’d been throwing up since eight. It was past noon now and the fever still hadn’t broken and he had that particular exhausted stillness about him that went beyond being upset about yesterday. I’d told myself at first that it was the events of the day before sitting heavy in his body. Children processed things differently. It made sense that he’d be off. But the fever changed that. I turned to Mirela. “I’m going to get him something from the clinic to help calm his stomach or break the fever.” Mirela set her cup down and stood up. “I’ll go. Stay with Tate.” “You don’t have to do that.” She gave me a

ELLARIA. I walked out of that clinic and kept walking. I didn't have a destination. I just needed to move, because standing still wasn't something my body was capable of right now, and thinking was even less of an option. What the hell? I pressed my palm flat against my sternum as I walked and tried to find the bottom of what I was feeling. I couldn't. It went too deep. It had too many layers and too many years attached to it, and I was not equipped to sort through any of it on a public street in broad daylight. Why me? That was the only thought that kept surfacing, and it wasn't even a fully formed question anymore. Just two words with nothing attached. Why me? Why had I been the one to fall in love with this man? Why had my heart decided on him out of every person it could have decided on? Was it because I hadn't been wise enough to know that fairy tales weren't real? Was it because I'd been so starved for something warm that I'd mistaken proximity for love and spent years call

ARREN.I redialed and redialed Ellaria a dozen times. She wasn’t picking up.I tried again and got the same nothing. Not even a ring. Just dead air and then the automated voice and I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen like it owed me something.Then Kade’s name came up.I answered before the first ring finished. “Talk.”His voice was clipped and moving fast underneath itself. “It’s bad out there. There are a nipers cutting through the northern section and people are dropping in the streets and I don’t understand what’s hitting them. There’s something in the fog. Something that spreads fast. I’ve never seen anything move like this.” A beat passed, background noise of shouting and movement and something I couldn’t place. “I have dozens of people with nowhere to go. If I don’t open the faction gates right now they’re going to die in the street.”I knew what he wasn’t saying.Opening the gates meant letting in everything outside them. The fog. Whatever was in it. The

ARREN.The monitors beeped.That was all there was in this room for hours. Just that sound and the rise and fall of her chest and the particular specific hell of sitting beside someone and not knowing when or if they were going to open their eyes.Pathetic wasn’t a word I’d use for myself right now.Numb was closer. Desperate was closer still.Kade had brought me sweatpants at some point and I’d put them on without registering the action. I hadn’t left her side since the doctors finished with her. I’d had her brought here, to the western packhouse I’d been staying in alone inside the faction, because taking her to the clinic meant risking everyone already there and this was the closest thing to proper care I could get her without doing that.The doctors had told me she wasn’t critical. That she’d suffered a head injury and significant blood loss and that she needed rest.Those words had done almost nothing to quiet the noise inside me.I’d paced this room for hours. Stood at the windo