Page 135 of Balance

She’d given me this as a gift, presenting it to me on her deathbed. There was no way I could have refused. Plus, despite my wariness of her, she’d been nice to us. Sure, her advice didn’t make any sense at all, but at least she tried.

And she was family. I might have been angry at my adoptive parents, but it would be disrespectful not to see this through. They deserved that much.

“Can I do something?” I asked, glancing toward the house. I’d glimpsed some late-blooming flowers earlier while working on Miles’s pants. It wouldn’t be much, but it was something.

“Sure.” Miles held one of the few lanterns in my direction. “I’ll get Kathleen while you get the flowers.”

I’d already turned to leave, but stopped misstep, looking to him, my mouth agape.

“Well…” His lips quirked, and he tilted his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Isn’t that what you were going to do?”

My pulse quickened, and a warm feeling spread through my chest, chasing away the cold dampness.

“Yes,” I breathed. How could he know me that well already?

“You’re exactly the same,” Miles answered my unspoken question with the wave of his hand. “You’ve always been the tenderhearted one. Now get your flowers.”

Blood rushed through me, heating my face. The same… was he comparing me to… Mu?

I should be offended, so why was my heart racing?

I wasn’t certain how this worked.

However, this was not the appropriate time to contemplate reincarnation. I turned, stepping away from the clearing. It wasn’t until I’d crossed to the far side of the house—to where Miles could no longer see me—that I leaned against the house and pressed my hand against my pounding chest.

We were about to lay Kathleen to rest, so I knew it was the wrong time to be feeling this way. But the concept of death was something that had never felt real, or final. There was only the violence preceding it, and the feeling of helplessness as you watched a loved one struggle.

I could only focus on what I knew.

Miles called me tenderhearted, but he didn’t understand. If I was a decent person, I should be sad, but I didn’t know how I felt. That brief moment of shock had passed, and now I was more morbidly curious than anything.

After all, death was only temporary, and Kathleen did say I would see her again one day.

I couldn’t get past the feeling that she was very much right.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Miles

Tumult

I tucked Kathleen into the middle of the circle, her face still uncovered while the edges of the blanket were folded under her. By the time I was finished, Bianca had made her way back from Kathleen’s gardens.

However, what she’d brought with her wasn’t what I expected for a funeral.

“Goldenrod?” I asked, noting Bianca’s carefully blank expression. Normally she was easy-to-read, which was partially why she was so terrifying. On a normal day, it was more than obvious that she somehow felt the need to protect me… and also that she wanted to murder Finn. The way her features would twist and eyes gleam was something out of a nightmare.

But today it was impossible to make sense of her emotions.

Her attention was turned from me, engrossed in the bouquet she carried as she walked toward my hastily-put-together burial site. There was something discombobulated about her, and she had an otherworldly mannerism that made it seem as though she’d disappear with the slightest breeze. It was the thick, grim air that caused my panic to rise—that made my senses snap to full alert.

I was close to losing her. It was almost the same as before.

When I returned from Kathleen’s mission, Bianca had been huddled, dangerously still, in a corner. And I’d been worried—just for an instant—that she’d disconnected herself from the world again.

But she hadn’t gone back to that unreachable place. In fact, she seemed to have recovered slightly. However, obviously something else was bothering her.

“I think it’s the only thing that fits,” Bianca answered, reaching the outer edge of the circle. The small, steady tone of her voice chased away the shadows. “Do you think she’d like it?”