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I draw my lips inwards for a moment, bite down on them, before I release with a sigh. “Ok.”

I run the brush down her oiled hair. The pieces are brittle still, but smoother, and it can’t take much more heat.

I swap the brush for the cup of face powder.

Her gaze traces my every move in the reflection of the vanity mirror. Silent, she watches as I pluck the thin powder brush from the pot.

I start on the glistened spots of her face. The soft bristles of the brush sweep over her fine nose, then flick across the point of her chin.

I falter.

Hesitation prickles through my hand, and I pause, the brush hovering near her face, but not quite touching.

I watch a fresh shine streak down her cheek.

A tear.

It falls as softly as the silence embraces us.

“What?” I whisper. “What is it?”

An icy trickle rains through me.

Finally, she tugs her gaze from the mirror and looks at me dead on.

Her pale lips crack into a flattened line. “I’m afraid.”

I almost think she means of bedding, of Rune, of regrets—

Until she adds, “Of dying.”

The wisp of a breath is tugged out of me.

I cut my gaze down.

“But not the way others think I am,” she says. “I’m afraid that if I leave this world too soon,” she pauses, and her voice trembles, it thins and threatens to break, “just days too soon, it will all fall apart. Daxeel is so close to pursuing his true wants.”

I swallow back a sudden thickness in my throat.

A tear rolls down my cheek, it finds a home in the curve of my jaw.

I force my stare to lift.

A sheath of dampness clings to my lashes. It warps my view of her, a milky film stretched over her inky hair; the paleness of her diamond eyes that look whitish now; smooths her ashy complexion into something muted.

I blink and the film is banished.

Diamonds glint at me. “He convinced himself over the years that his only draw to you is the evate bond. That without it, he will not love you. That belief is the only thing that kept him sane in your absence. If I leave…”

I lower the powder brush to my lap.

Quiet, I only watch her.

I let her speak her fears to me. And unlike the others around her, the ones who assure her that all will be alright, the ones who lie, I just weep silently.

“I’m afraid of what this will do to them.” Her shoulders sag with a deflating sigh. “Daxeel will hold onto all things ugly. After you shamed him, he was… ruthless. He drank in Kithe constantly. He got into all sorts of violence, killed males in street fights, he barely spoke to anyone, if at all.” She swallows, thick. “The iilra came and gave him purpose. And the others…”

Her loosened breath trembles.