Page 98 of The Vixen

“Just hang tight…”

Help is on the way.

She stares at her knees and seems content to leave it at that. I wait only a few more moments before leaving, giving Goatee and Puffy Cheeks a friendly nod as I head outside.

It’s a quiet walk back to the Keep. The night sky is full of clouds like it’ll snow again, which is fitting for a two-month stretch where every day is worse than the last.

Mother Nature used to love me like a son. She would wake me with a gentle kiss on the forehead with her rays. I refused to have curtains or blinds in my bedroom, and every night I sleptwith the window open, always trusting her to keep the moths away. She never let me down.

Clearly, I’ve pissed her off.

As if I conjured it with my thoughts, an icy flake flutters to my cheeks and melts against my skin. My steps slow to a stop as I look up at the sky, more snowflakes collecting on my face.

I sigh before lowering my head and carrying on toward the Keep. The snowfall gets heavier as minutes tick by, but my pace never quickens. I don’t think I’m used to the cold. I just think I’m tired.

I want to go home.

The thought has hit me more the last couple of days, and I blame it on the lack of sunshine and poor company. The captivity doesn’t help.

Before I came here, when I was spending every day absorbed in new tasks, a newlife, I could almost forget that I missed the one before it. Now… I’m struggling.

I have too much time to think, too many reminders of all that has changed—my reputation being the biggest. It amazes me the different realities Liberty and Aubry have. I’m a completely different person to each, and neither version is real. I’m not even surewhatis real or who I am.

Luna pops into my mind, and like a reflex, I try to push her out before I can understand why. But I don’t succeed. Our conversation from earlier plays in my head and twists a cord in my chest until tension pulls my arms against my sides.

Angel—plus seven different therapists and a hypnotist—is the only other person I’ve told that story to. It was our second year at Cambridge, and he wanted to know why I kept passing up on hiking trips with our friends.

When I told him the hunting trip story, I’d laughed. Told a couple of self deprecating jokes. Waited for him to call me a pussy and for the moment to pass.

But he just stared at me. And like a bitch, I started tearing up.

Four years and our first million dollars later, I paid a hypnotist ten thousand dollars to help me get over my fear of forests. It didn’t work. Neither did the therapists. Turns out, I had to spend twenty-nine million more dollars on a private island where every fucking inch was mapped out in my mind before I could succeed.

Now, I’ve hiked just about every continent in the world, and my three-day episode ofLostis nothing but a memory I don’t share and no longer allow myself to think about. Until tonight. Until Luna.

It feels wrong.Sickto use such deeply personal parts of myself to lower her guard and bring her closer to me. It’s necessary and effective, as shetold meit would be, but it feels… I don’t know. I don’t like it. I’m starting not to like any of this.

But I don’t see what choice I have. Angel will be here soon enough, and he’ll be bringing hell with him. He can take care of The Shadow Sanctum himself, but when he’s finished, he’ll also take care of me.

I need to be gone before that happens. Preferably before he arrives.

That drone is on me at all times, and Zephyr is no longer around to give me a hand with security. It’s not going to be simple to break past their measures this time.

Luna herself is going to have to show me the exit… And she will. I’m confident she will.

I don’t know why that feels wrong.

Taking a curve along the concrete path, something poking from the snow catches my eye. I veer into the grass before crouching to observe the wildflower encased in ice. With a gentle glide of my palm, I brush frost off the stem.

The pale color of its petals are wilted and sad, but it’s incredible that it’s managed to survive this long. Fragile, yetenduring. Like Luna. And like Luna, its beauty is somehow both unmatched and unrecognized. It’s nothing you’d see in a magazine but everything you feel when you read poetry.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.