Cassian spoke for eleven minutes...
I know because I counted. Not deliberately- my mind simply needed something
precise to hold onto while the rest of me sat very still and absorbed what was being said, the way a stone wall absorbs rain.
He used phrases like "for the good of the pack" and "the shaman's prophecy" and
"I never meant for it to happen this way."
He used Lyra's name with a tenderness he had not used with mine in perhaps two years.
He said the Silver Moon Rite, when performed between bonded mates, carried a secondary power- it could heal not just the curse bearer but fortify the new bond, strengthen the bloodline, usher in what the shaman called "a season of renewal."
He said: "Lyra's bond with me would be stronger than ours ever was. The pack
needs this." He said: "You've always been rational, Nadia. That's one of the things I've always admired about you.
A sharp pain lanced through my heart.
I couldn't believe what he told me.
You understand the larger picture." He said: "You'll always have been my first mate. That doesn't disappear."
That last sentence was the one that cracked something in me- not dramatically, not with noise.
A hairline fracture, deep and clean, the kind that doesn't bleed immediately.
My heart sank. So they had been waiting for this.
He was speaking of me in past tense while I was still sitting in front of him.
I looked at Lyra.
She was watching her hands in her lap, and there was a quality to her stillness that I had learned to recognize over the years.
It was the stillness of someone performing remorse for an audience. True remorse has an ugliness to it- a helpless, flailing quality.
Lyra's grief was always composed, always just the right amount.
Enough to seem genuine.
Not enough to be inconvenient.
I had taught her half of what she knew. That thought arrived without irony."What exactly are you asking me to do?" I said.
Cassian exhaled. Relief was already edging into his posture. He thought the hard
part was over. "The bond severance would need to be formalized. Before the elder circle.
And then- your studio. Your northern territories. The shaman said that for Lyra's
recovery to be complete, she would need a secure foundation. Resources. A place of her own within the pack hierarchy- "
"My studio?" My voice was even. I had built that runework studio over six years. It
was the first thing that had ever been entirely mine.
"We could make provisions for you- "
"My northern territories as well."
"Nadia- "
"And you want me to sever the bond." I paused. "So that you can use the Silver
Moon Rite- the cure that would have saved my life- to instead strengthen your bond
with my sister."
I felt a soul-rending agony, but I managed a faint smile anyway.
The word sister landed in the room like a stone in still water.
Cassian had the grace to flinch. "When you say it like that- "
"How would you prefer I say it?"
*Silence.*
Lyra looked up. Her eyes were luminous, carefully wet. "Nadia, I know this is so much to ask. I told Cassian we shouldn't ask it of you. I said you'd given enough already." She paused. "But the pack elders- when they heard the shaman's prophecy- they were unanimous. And I thought... you've always put the pack first. It's always been one of the things everyone admires about you."
There it was. The shape of the trap, finally visible.
I was being asked to die gracefully so that my dying could be useful to them.
I was being asked to hand over everything I had built, everything I had earned, and then to simply not exist anymore in a way that caused them inconvenience.
And the mechanism by which this was being engineered- the lever they were
using- was my own reputation for selflessness.
All those years of giving, all that careful
putting-others-first, had not earned me protection.
It had simply taught them the precise angle at which to aim the request.
I looked at them both. My mate. My sister.
I thought of a girl crouching at the edge of Coldwater Creek with a split lip and
frightened eyes. I thought of my seventeen-year-old self tugging on my mother's sleeve
and saying: please. She's alone.
"I'll need to review the formal documents," I said. "Give me until tomorrow morning."
Cassian visibly relaxed. "Of course. Take whatever time you need."
"There will be no negotiation after I sign," I said. "Whatever I agree to is final."
"Understood."
I stood. Put on my coat. I looked at Lyra one more time and she gave me a small, grateful, heartbreaking smile that she had probably rehearsed in the mirror.
I turned and walked out.
In the corridor outside, I stopped. I pressed my back against the cold stone wall
and closed my eyes.
The moment I took a step, darkness washed over me. I couldn't breathe as the curse's power surged.
I was jolted awake by a splash of cold water.
"Are you okay?" Cassian asked. As if he cared. I did not answer that because clearly I wasn't.
The dark lines on my skin pulsed once, twice.
Three days. My hands were perfectly steady. I reached into my coat pocket and found my communication stone. I pressed it once- a single, pre-arranged signal to the only person outside this pack I still trusted.
Then I straightened, composed my face, and went to find the pack's legal recorder. Because I had not yet decided to give them anything. I had decided to give them
the appearance of everything. That was not the same thing.
And I was running out of time...