25. Sawyer
SAWYER
The Nurturer’s compound has even more guards than the Keep.
Two stand outside every entrance. Spotlights shine into the courtyard. The setup is thorough and organized, a stark contrast to the Keep’s randomness. I’m now ninety percent sure Luna has been fucking with my head.
Hands tucked snugly inside my pockets, I backpedal into the woods before going around so I can take the concrete path to the compound’s front door. The Keeper’s standing watch narrow their eyes as I stroll toward them.
I give a little wave before tossing my hood off my head so I’m more recognizable. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
“What are you doing here?” A goateed douche asks, his eyes flicking over my shoulder. “Where’s your accompanying Keeper?”
“I was hoping to check on my friend… Head Keeper gave me the okay.”
Goatee exchanges a look with what appears to be a child. Nineteen at most with baby fat still puffing his cheeks.
Did he initiate?
“Thorne wouldn’t approve,” Goatee settles on, his gruff voice full of authority. I picture him coming here, having his initiating match with another Keeper. I bet they let him win.
“Is he here? Let me ask him.”
“His room is at the Bastion,” Puffy Cheeks says.
My hands pull my jacket outward as I shrug, eyebrows raising. “Okay, well… Luna said it was cool, and I walked all this way so…”
An acne scar on Goatee’s face shifts.
“Look man, they have people guarding the Keep too. I’m pretty sure there’s a drone on me at all times. If I was stealthy enough to sneak out, I wouldn’t be walking straight up to your front door.”
They exchange another look.
“Come on, I’m gonna be in and out in ten minutes. Send someone over to ask Luna if you want. She’s working, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a thirty second interruption so she can tell you what she’s already told me.”
“The Head Keeper is not to be bothered,” Puffy Cheeks squeaks with a little too much energy. Like the suggestion alone makes his pecker flinch. She has these guys by the balls.
A couple moments go by while Goatee purses his lips and thinks. “Ten minutes,” he finally says, and steps to the side.
Liberty is already asleep when I get to her room.
She left a lamp on, but I’m certain she’s out by the way she’s situated the blanket between her legs in her sleep. Her nightgown rides up too high, like she doesn’t know there’s a camera in this room. I can’t decide whether or not I should remind her.
As soon as I shut the door, her body tenses, sheer fright snapping her awake. She doesn’t shoot up to see who it is. She just lays facing away from me.
I walk to the bed and sit before taking the folded sheet of paper from my pocket. When I toss it in front of her, she slowly unfolds it. The tension in the room eases as she realizes it’s just me.
She scans the note quietly as she sits up and untwists her legs so she can pull the blanket up over her chest. It took me over an hour to write such an elaborate code just to say Angel has made contact and will be here soon.
I had to use nothing but shared history and gibberish to make it uncrackable to anyone but her, so it doesn’t surprise me when a minute passes without her understanding.
Eventually, she gets it. When she lowers the paper, she sighs.
I take it from her and rip it in half. Only the top part has my chicken scratch.
I hand Liberty half the pieces of the note and start putting the other half in my mouth, letting saliva loosen it before I swallow. When all the pieces are gone, I crumble up what’s left, shove it in my pocket, and get up to leave.
“Did it work?” she asks, making me pause. My shoulders bunch as I cringe, and I’m glad I’m facing away so she can’t see my annoyance.
We agreed not to speak indoors. Not about anything important, which is the only thing either of us have to say to the other. Inside, there are cameras. Outside, there are drones. The drones don’t pick up what we’re saying. If they did, Luna wouldn’t need to have me bugged.
I turn to her, schooling my expression.
Did it work?
Yes. Yes, it did.
Luna is strong. She’s smart. I’m convinced she isn’t easily influenced, she can’t be easily swayed.
But… Yeah. It worked. Or it’s working.
Still, I find myself shaking my head. I don’t know why.
Liberty pulls her knees up and frowns. “I guess you’re not as good with the ladies as you thought.”
I blink at her but don’t respond. She never misses an opportunity to insult me. Never. In the last few days, she’s made her hatred for me clear so many times, I’m starting to wonder if it’s herself she’s reminding.
Sometimes, I wish I was strong enough to let her die.
“Just hang tight…”
Help is on the way.
She stares at her knees and seems content to leave it at that. I wait only a few more moments before leaving, giving Goatee and Puffy Cheeks a friendly nod as I head outside.
It’s a quiet walk back to the Keep. The night sky is full of clouds like it’ll snow again, which is fitting for a two-month stretch where every day is worse than the last.
Mother Nature used to love me like a son. She would wake me with a gentle kiss on the forehead with her rays. I refused to have curtains or blinds in my bedroom, and every night I slept with the window open, always trusting her to keep the moths away. She never let me down.
Clearly, I’ve pissed her off.
As if I conjured it with my thoughts, an icy flake flutters to my cheeks and melts against my skin. My steps slow to a stop as I look up at the sky, more snowflakes collecting on my face.
I sigh before lowering my head and carrying on toward the Keep. The snowfall gets heavier as minutes tick by, but my pace never quickens. I don’t think I’m used to the cold. I just think I’m tired.
I want to go home.
The thought has hit me more the last couple of days, and I blame it on the lack of sunshine and poor company. The captivity doesn’t help.
Before I came here, when I was spending every day absorbed in new tasks, a new life, I could almost forget that I missed the one before it. Now… I’m struggling.
I have too much time to think, too many reminders of all that has changed—my reputation being the biggest. It amazes me the different realities Liberty and Aubry have. I’m a completely different person to each, and neither version is real. I’m not even sure what is real or who I am.
Luna pops into my mind, and like a reflex, I try to push her out before I can understand why. But I don’t succeed. Our conversation from earlier plays in my head and twists a cord in my chest until tension pulls my arms against my sides.
Angel—plus seven different therapists and a hypnotist—is the only other person I’ve told that story to. It was our second year at Cambridge, and he wanted to know why I kept passing up on hiking trips with our friends.
When I told him the hunting trip story, I’d laughed. Told a couple of self deprecating jokes. Waited for him to call me a pussy and for the moment to pass.
But he just stared at me. And like a bitch, I started tearing up.
Four years and our first million dollars later, I paid a hypnotist ten thousand dollars to help me get over my fear of forests.
It didn’t work. Neither did the therapists.
Turns out, I had to spend twenty-nine million more dollars on a private island where every fucking inch was mapped out in my mind before I could succeed.
Now, I’ve hiked just about every continent in the world, and my three-day episode of Lost is nothing but a memory I don’t share and no longer allow myself to think about. Until tonight. Until Luna.
It feels wrong. Sick to use such deeply personal parts of myself to lower her guard and bring her closer to me. It’s necessary and effective, as she told me it would be, but it feels… I don’t know. I don’t like it. I’m starting not to like any of this.
But I don’t see what choice I have. Angel will be here soon enough, and he’ll be bringing hell with him. He can take care of The Shadow Sanctum himself, but when he’s finished, he’ll also take care of me.
I need to be gone before that happens. Preferably before he arrives.
That drone is on me at all times, and Zephyr is no longer around to give me a hand with security. It’s not going to be simple to break past their measures this time.
Luna herself is going to have to show me the exit… And she will. I’m confident she will.
I don’t know why that feels wrong.
Taking a curve along the concrete path, something poking from the snow catches my eye. I veer into the grass before crouching to observe the wildflower encased in ice. With a gentle glide of my palm, I brush frost off the stem.
The pale color of its petals are wilted and sad, but it’s incredible that it’s managed to survive this long. Fragile, yet enduring. Like Luna. And like Luna, its beauty is somehow both unmatched and unrecognized. It’s nothing you’d see in a magazine but everything you feel when you read poetry.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
My eyes close as I hear my mother’s voice reading the words aloud from a book she kept beneath her mattress like it was contraband. She used to read me these as bedtime stories, and no matter how many times I asked what they meant, she never gave a straight answer.
“Don’t listen to the words. Feel them,” she would say.
I wish I could tell her I feel them now.
Breath fogging in the cold air, I snap the stem and bring the flower to my chest, cradling the petals as if snowflakes will shatter them.
I walk the rest of the way to the Keep while my toes numb, and by the time I make it inside, my hood has collected a layer of snow that spills onto the tiled entryway.
My shoes squeak as I head up the stairs, and when I get to Luna’s door, I slip them off and abandon them in the hall.
Her light is off when I crack the door open, and when I step inside, she doesn’t stir. She’s facing away from me, just as Liberty had. And like Liberty, she merely pretends to be asleep.
Pulling the covers back with one hand, I lay the flower in front of her and silently climb into bed behind her. My arm locks around her stomach as I flatten my chest against her back, my groin settling against her rear.
I think about telling her that I’m sorry. That I shouldn’t have pushed. That I won’t ever do it again.
Instead, I kiss her hair, close my eyes, and go to sleep.