Chapter 148

Lila

The sun was out again.

I could tell by the thin slant of light crawling across the floor, catching the edges of my bedframe and turning the dust motes into slow-moving stars.

The window had been allowed to be open just a crack, and the air drifting in smelled like damp stone and distant flowers. The kind of scent that should’ve reminded me of spring. Of breath. Of life.

It reminded me how I couldn’t walk in the gardens. Couldn’t leave my room. Wouldn’t see my mother again.

I hadn’t moved from my bed since morning. Maybe longer. The same dress clung to me, wrinkled and damp beneath the arms. My hair was unbrushed. My lips dry. My thoughts, what few remained, floated somewhere far above my body.

There was a knock. A soft one. Then the door opened.

I didn’t turn my head, but I knew it was Ronan by the quiet way he moved. The careful gait. He didn’t try to fill the silence this time. Just walked in and set something down on the bedside table.

The smell of broth followed: warm, salted, faintly herbal.

“Lila,” he said gently, crouching beside me.

I blinked slowly, faintly registering be had used my name and not a formal title. My gaze stayed unfocused somewhere between the rug and the wall.

“Just a little,” he urged. “You haven’t eaten. You need your strength.”

Strength for what? I wondered.

He waited. When I didn’t respond, he reached for the bowl and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed it in my hands. His fingers were warm against mine. Steady.

I stared at the broth. My hands didn’t tighten around it. Didn’t lift it. Just held the weight of the bowl as if I didn’t understand what it was for.

Then, slowly, without meaning to, I let the bowl slip from my grasp.

The bowl tilted. Sloshed. Tumbled from my hands and hit the rug with a dull splash. The scent of pepper and marrow filled the room as broth soaked into the fabric.

Ronan froze. For a long time, he said nothing. Then he exhaled through his nose, soft and strained, and stood.

“I’ll come back later,” he murmured.

The door clicked shut behind him once again.

I watched the liquid pool beneath the bedside table. It spread in quiet ripples. No one rushed to clean it.

Good.

I let my head tip back against the headboard, eyes tracing the lines in the ceiling. One of the cracks looked like a tree. Another like a claw. I wondered how many nights I’d stared at that claw without noticing it.

Another hour passed. Maybe more.

The door opened again.

I didn’t look up but I knew it was Damon by the way the air shifted, how the presence of him pressed against the room itself. He always carried too much of it. His power, his silence, his worry, his tyrant war.

He stopped a few feet away. I could feel his eyes on me.

“Lila,” he said softly.

I didn’t move, so he tried again. “There’s progress. The council’s easing. I’m… I’m handling it.”

I turned my gaze toward him then. Slowly. I was too numb to show the anger festering for him.

He looked tired. Paler than usual. One of his knuckles was wrapped, like he’d punched something hard and come away with a souvenir.

His jaw twitched when I didn’t answer.

“I’ve sent for more help,” he added. “We’ll find a way through this.”

We. The word was dust in my ears.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small book, leather-bound, worn at the edges. He placed it carefully on the nightstand. A favorite of mine. Once.

“Just… read if you can,” he said, voice rough. “I’ll check on you later.”

He waited a beat. Two. Then bent down and pressed his lips to my forehead before turning and left.

The silence settled deeper around me, stretching long and wide like an empty sea. And I let it drown me.

I lay curled on my side, facing the window, the blanket bunched beneath my ribs but not over me.

I hadn’t moved when Damon left, nor when the broth spilled. Not when the sun began to set. Not when the cold crept in and stiffened my fingers.

The only sound was the fire: soft crackling, a log shifting with a low groan like something old getting up. I felt like that, even staying in bed as I was.

The door opened again.

Soft footsteps padded across the floor. Slower than Ronan’s. Lighter than Damon’s.

Emma sat down on the edge of the bed behind me, careful not to jostle the mattress. I felt the dip from her weight, the slight pull of the blanket beneath her.

She placed something on the nightstand. Bread. Jam. A pot of tea. The smell was too sweet, and I hated the gentle rumble my stomach made.

Still, I said nothing.

“I brought the one with honey,” Emma said softly, like we were still sharing secrets in a dormitory corridor instead of sitting in the wreckage of everything I’d tried to hold together. “It really is the best.”

Silence.

“I asked the cook to make it just for you. It’s warm still. If you want it.”

My lips didn’t part. My eyes didn’t blink. I felt still as a living statue. But Emma shifted so lay beside me, placing a hand lightly over my shoulder.

“Lila,” she said, voice cracking. “Please talk to me.”

I blinked once, very slowly. But the words were locked in a box too deep to reach.

Emma’s breath hitched, and it broke the damn inside me, just a crack.

“I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I’ve been trying to stay hopeful. I thought maybe Damon was just protecting you. That he was doing his best.” She whispered.

Hesitating, she continued. “But something’s wrong. And no one will tell me anything. And now you’re…” She trailed off. “You’re scaring me.”

Her fingers tightened gently, seeking to offer comfort for both of us.

“I’m not asking you to forgive anyone. Or to feel better. I just want to know you’re still in there. That I haven’t lost you.”

She waited.

And waited.

The fire snapped sharply, the sound too loud in the hush that followed.

Finally, I turned my head just a little. My lips were dry and cracked, my voice barely a whisper.

“There’s nothing left for me here.”

The words came out flat. Empty. And it was the truth.

Emma’s hand jerked back like she’d been burned. Her inhale was sharp, and when I turned my face again toward the wall, I felt the bed tremble beneath her.

She didn’t answer in words, instead she reached again, smoothing a hand through my hair. Her fingers were warm and shaking. A tear fell onto the blanket near my shoulder. Then another.

She shifted forward, wrapping me in her arms. “Then I’ll stay until there is,” she whispered. “Even if I have to drag the pieces back myself.”

I let her cry beside me.

I let her hold everything I could no longer bear to carry alone.