A Tune to Make Them Follow (Severed Realms, #2)

by T.A. Lawrence

My gut reeled, but I swallowed the bile in my throat as I slumped into the sheets, willing my breath to slow, to go shallow. Just as she expected it to after drugging my tea. She didn’t know I’d replaced her anesthetic—the one I’d found the night I’d looked through her satchel to help her dress her wounds—with a benign oil that had no medicinal value two nights ago. Didn’t know I’d expected her to flee in the night any day now. That I’d been debating asking her to stay, admitting that I knew the truth about her profession, that I didn’t care. This was what I got, what I deserved, for being so consumed with my desire for her that I’d forgotten—no, chosen—to rid myself of any sense of decency and to forget them. Forget the children whose lives she’d ruined. To forget her. To forget Cheyenne. Even Piper hadn’t forgotten her, inking her skin forever with her memory. My chest was hollow. Nothing beat inside it. Dead. My sister was dead. I’d found that bloodied cloak myself, shredded, the compass I’d gifted her strewn across the clearing, the glass cracked, the string which she’d used to secure it around her neck snapped and frayed.