Luna
In the minutes that pass after the horn blares, I lie still. My eyes train on the ceiling, breaths lifting my chest with even inhales. No different than the twenty other days I’ve lived since meeting Sawyer Hansley.
Yet nothing is the same.
The door downstairs slams shut and feet stomp up the stairs, announcing my knight, my rescuer.
I laugh at the idea. Though nothing is funny.
Thorne’s bulky knuckles rap on the door three times. Pause. Twice more.
“Luna?”
The door groans, but I don’t lift my head to watch Thorne enter. I hear his hesitation, his boots creaking the old floorboards as he cautiously approaches. As if I’m infected. As if I’m a corpse.
“Are you all right?”
Am I all right?
No. Not really.
I laugh again.
“It’s over now,” he says, as if that’s reassurance. As if that doesn’t mean I’ve failed. “The Nurturers arranged for the children to perform a dance… We can go together.”
After closing my eyes for one last restless moment, I climb from the bed and walk toward the door. Thorne stops me before I can pass him, his large palms covering the entirety of my shoulders.
When I look up at him, he’s frowning.
“Are you okay?” he asks once more. He pulls off his jacket and wraps it around me. The gesture is so kind, so intimate, that it drops a ball of lead into my gut. I nod and force my back flat.
Relief. It should be relief.
Why doesn’t it feel like relief?
With a gentle caress, Thorne raises my chin high to look up at him. He’s always been so much taller than me. Ever since we were children.
“I missed you…”
I wrap my fingers around Thorne’s wrist. My eyes close as he presses his forehead to mine. Strong and warm and present.
“I missed you too, my love,” I say with as much conviction as my voice will allow. A lie that’s never been difficult to tell—before this moment. Before my treehouse conversation with Sawyer.
Poor loverboy.
My throat tightens as I swallow and run my hand through Thorne’s thick brown locks, just barely long enough to catch between my fingers. So different from the wavy strands of sandy blonde I wished to touch—ached to touch—only an hour ago.
I break away from Thorne to pull on his jacket. It swallows the whore dress Sawyer chose for me. Brown leather reaches all the way to the tops of my knees.
Safe. That’s how I once felt enveloped in Thorne’s warmth, and I’m taken there now. To the empty forest on the coldest of nights, the moon full and beaming in a starry sky.
I was eleven. He was fifteen, just a boy I watched through a window, and the first boy, the first person to catch me alone in the trees—my home, my sanctuary.
Like the little girl I was, I turned to run from him, but he caught me with his voice. Wait! A voice sweet as cherries, with kindness belonging to the purest of souls.
I waited.
He crept close, hands out. “You’re Aurelius’s daughter, right?”
I’d had no idea my father claimed me as his. Though, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Even Thorne was old enough to remember my birth. It’s hard to forget the Shadow Sanctum bearing a demon child, as much as the people desired to.
Reluctant, I nodded.
He smiled. Then, his eyes locked onto my hands shaking at my sides. He took off his coat. Offered it to me.
“I’m Thorne,” he said, coat outstretched, unaffected by my eyes darting between him and the meager cloth. Cloth I would have bled for. “What’s your name?”
“Daemonium.”
Demon.
He frowned. The sight was so unsettling, I took the coat, pulled it on, and stared at my toes while awaiting judgment.
Father had warned me of the people’s disgust. They didn’t know me like he did; they demanded I be put up, out of a sight—a doll whose eyes never glowed red beneath the protection of the Keep.
When I found the courage to peek, Thorne was smiling again, though it was somehow sad.
Huge boyish hands tucked inside his pockets while he braced the cold.
“You look like a…” When he looked up, the milky moon cast a glint over brown eyes made so beautiful in the glassy light. “Luna. You look like a Luna to me.”
And because the boy said it first, it was so.
My throat clears as I come back to the present, shaking away the memory. These past few weeks have made me soft. The price of summoning vulnerability.
I pull the jacket tight and cross my arms. “I’m assuming Mr. Hansley is on the move?”
Thorne nods. “The drones are tracking him as we speak. You were right. Someone erased the swine’s profile from our database.”
“But it’s fixed now.”
“Yes. As of this morning.” When I don’t look relieved, he goes on. “I’ve been watching him myself.”
“Have you seen him with anyone since? He made contact with the traitor less than an hour ago.”
Thorne winces, face pinched with an apology. “He climbed through a window into the Grove’s basement a little while ago, but when Zephyr went to check it out, she didn’t see him.”
Shocking.
“You sent her?”
“I…” His lips fumble. “Well, I mean, she volunteered. She was watching the cameras with me.”
Of course she was.
I look away as a pin stabs my chest. Small but sharp.
Get a hold of yourself.
“Should I send the Keepers after Hansley?”
“No.” I shake my head. “If we send them now, we risk never knowing where he’s escaping from… Have all drones directed toward him and make sure the Keepers are ready for retrieval. He’ll lead us right to the exit… And to the traitor.”
Thorne hesitates to respond, and I’m not sure if that means he’s doubting me or something else. I’m not even sure I care.
“Okay,” he says. “Consider it done.”
Raking hair over my forehead, I close my eyes. “Good.”
“You look tired…”
“I am tired.” I force myself to smile for the sake of hiding what’s inside my head. As if it matters. As if he’s as talented at reading minds as Sawyer.
He isn’t.
No one is.
Not even me.
Lacing my fingers with Thorne’s, I lift his hand and tug the red bracelet on his wrist. It’s a token of betrayal I’ve fingered for the past year. Never angry. Never jealous. Because Luna Cox isn’t capable of such a feeling.
Now, I know better.
“You know I don’t believe in monogamy.” I try to ease my expression as shame sinks into his face. He looks away quickly but doesn’t pull his hand from mine. “But I need you to take this off.”
He opens his mouth, his eyes strained with guilt. I cup his face so he’ll look at me.
“Don’t speak… Just act.”
His mouth hangs open for a moment before he reluctantly nods, pulling his hand from mine.
He takes out his knife and flicks it open before sawing my sister’s cruel taunt off his wrist. It drifts to the floor between us never to be spoken of again.
Maybe never to be seen. I’m seriously considering burning this house down along with everything in it.
When he goes to tuck his knife away, I grasp it and slowly pull it free. “Thank you.”
“I love you,” he whines. His face twitches with a silent cry, bleeding heart he is. “I’ve always loved you. That isn’t…” He points to the bracelet. “Whatever you think that is—”
“Quiet, my sweet.” I force a smile while caressing his jaw until his lip no longer trembles. “I understand.”
His brow furrows in confusion, his face sunk. He waits for me to explain, as if he deserves a fair trial. But I get it.
How could I share my mate with my sister for over a year while saying nothing, presumably while knowing nothing?
I wish the truth wasn’t so simple. Then maybe I wouldn’t see it so clearly.
Zephyr, my beloved, my sister, my twin is sunshine. I am the moon.
She is passionate fire. I am unforgiving ice.
Her bed is simply warmer than mine. She’s used more than one man to prove it.
“Sometimes, I can be too cold,” I whisper, curling my finger around Thorne’s ear, proud of how level my voice sounds even while my heart cracks.
I lift my dress and clip his knife to my undergarment before laying it back down and gesturing toward the door. “Shall we?”