After Mary lowered herself into the wooden chair across from her boss, she reached out and picked up a crystal paperweight that was in the shape of a diamond. The thing was nearly the size of her palm, heavy as her arm, and she smoothed its facets with her thumbs, watching the light refract out of its depths.

Was this ever going to get any easier with that girl, she wondered.

“Mary?”

“What?” She glanced up. “Sorry, I’m all in my head.”

Marissa leaned on her elbows. “I totally understand. What’s up?”

* * *

Xcor was removed from the training center at around eight o’clock—and Layla saw it all happen.

As soon as her alarm had gone off after sunset, she had gotten out of bed and propped the door to her room open with one of her slippers—such that as she lay back, she could see a slice of the corridor through the crack. And sure enough, the Brothers had soon moved him, just as she had guessed they would: hearing the sound of many heavy footsteps, she had gotten up and stood to the side so that she could see without being noticed.

Eventually, they had paraded by, and Xcor had been with them, lying prone on a rolling table, a sheet covering him from top of head to tip of foot. As they had passed, she had had to press her hands to her mouth. So many machines with him, clearly keeping him alive. And then there were the Brothers, all of them and each fully weaponized, their massive bodies strewn with deadly daggers and guns.

Closing her eyes and holding onto the door jamb, she’d been consumed by the need to rush out and stop them, to beg for Xcor’s life, to pray unto the Scribe Virgin for his recovery and his release. She had even marshalled words in his defense, things such as, “He has not attacked us even though he knows our location!” and, “He has never hurt me, never once in all the nights I met him!” and the ever popular, “He’s changed from the traitor he once was!”

All of it had served only to confirm her own guilt—and so she had stayed where she was, listening to them proceed all the way down the hall to the parking area.

As the final door had clanked shut and been locked, she had reiterated to herself that she needed to let it go.

She told herself, forcefully, that Xcor was the enemy. Nothing more. And nothing less.

Lurching forward, she returned to her bed, climbing up upon it and tucking her feet under her. With her heart pounding and her brow and upper lip sweating, she tried to control her emotions. Surely this kind of stress was not good for the young—

The knock on her door brought her head around. “Yes?” she yelped.

Had she been found out?

“’Tis I, Luchas.” Qhuinn’s brother sounded worried. “May I enter?”

“Please.” She hefted herself back onto the floor and re-shuffled herself to the door, opening it wide. “Do come in.”

As she stood to one side, the male cranked his arms around the wheels of his chair, his forward progress slow, but independent. There had been talk of getting him a mechanized one, but this self-directed momentum was part of his rehabilitation, and indeed, it seemed to be working. Sitting with his knees together and his thin body only a little hunched over, he had all of Qhuinn’s handsomeness and intelligence, none of his brother’s weight and vitality.

It was very sad. But at least he was getting around now—something that had long been an impossibility for him.

Then again, getting tortured by lessers had cost him more than just a finger or two.

When he had cleared the jambs, Layla allowed the panel to shut on its own and once more returned to the bed. Getting up on it, she straightened her nightgown, and smoothed her hair. As a Chosen, it would have been far more appropriate for her to receive a visitor in one of the traditional white robes of her station, but she no longer fit in any of them, for one thing. For another, Qhuinn’s brother and she had long past dispensed with any formality.

“I find it rather impressive that I made it down this far anew,” he said in a voice that was a monotone.

“I’m glad for the company.” Although she would not be telling him why. “I feel . . . rather caged in here.”

“How fare you this eve?”

As the question was posed, he did not meet her eyes—but he never did. His gray stare remained pinned four feet off the floor, its direction changing only when he turned his frail body this way or that in his chair.

She had never before been so grateful for another’s dysfunction, for his reticence provided her some privacy as she attempted to control her emotions—although she supposed that didn’t reflect well on her character.

What did, though, lately.

“I am well. And you?”

“Well, indeed. I must needs attend to my physical therapy in fifteen minutes.”

“I know you shall do well.”

“How fare my brother’s young?”

“Very well, thank you. They are bigger every night.”

“You have been much blessed, as has he. For that, I am most grateful.”

It was the same conversation every evening. Then again, what else did the two of them have that was worthy of any kind of polite discourse?

Too many secrets on her side.

Too much suffering on his.

In a way, they were one of a kind.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Tomb was the Brotherhood’s sanctum sanctorum, a place where new members were inducted, and old members went after they died—and as such, it was protected from intruders through mechanisms both ancient and modern.