The Ugly Luna

CHAPTER 13

ELLIE

The following morning, we get ready without speaking.

I slip into a fitted black dress that falls just above my knees, the soft fabric hugging my curves without feeling too tight. I pair it with ankle boots and pull my hair over one shoulder. I pin the badge on last.

Across the room, Adrian adjusts the cuffs of his black shirt beneath a charcoal jacket. He takes my coat off the hook and holds it out. I put it on without looking at him.

On our way out, he stops at the door.

"Before we go." He doesn't look at me when he says it. "Come somewhere with me first."

Where?

The question is right there, but I don't let it out. I nod instead.

We go down in the elevator and out through the side doors. He takes a path west toward the hills behind the compound. I hadn't known there was anything out this way.

The paving gives out to grass, then to a slope of old trees. Wind comes up the valley, and I pull my coat closed at the throat, my breath going white in front of me.

He doesn't talk while we walk. He shortens his stride without seeming to notice he's doing it, keeping me level with him.

The trees open.

Graves sit on the flat of the hill, four long rows of them, the stones weathered down to soft gray and furred with lichen at the base. Somebody keeps the grass cut. There are flowers on three of them, and the sun crest is carved at the head of every single one, worn shallow on the older ones until it's barely a shape at all.

Adrian walks to the second row and stops.

The stone is plain. Alora Black, two dates, and the crest underneath. She died twenty-four years ago.

He stands in front of it with his hands at his sides.

"Mom." He takes a breath, his gaze fixed on the headstone. "Meet my mate."

My breath goes out of me.

I don't move. I can't. My eyes go from the stone to his face and back again.

He brought me here.

He hasn't said one word to me about her. Not her name, not that she's dead, not that this hill exists.

His jaw tightens.

"She's a healer," he says. "Like you."

The wind moves through the trees behind us.

"Strong-headed too." He smiles. It's a small one, and it doesn't get anywhere near his eyes.

Then he stops. He doesn't say anything else. He just stands with his hands loose at his sides, looking at his mother's name. The silence goes on, and he lets it.

I watch the side of his face.

I don't have a word for what I'm looking at. I only know what I saw when he said like you, the way something moved behind his eyes, and then shut. I know it wasn't pride or grief. I have never seen him look at anything else that way.

My fingers slide through the gaps between his and close, before I've decided to do it. His hand turns over and takes mine properly. His thumb presses once against the back of it.

I look at the stone.

"Hello," I say.

I feel Adrian turn his head toward me, but I keep my eyes on the headstone.

"I'm Ellie." My voice comes out thick, and I clear my throat. "It's nice to meet you."

I keep my gaze on the crest carved into the top of the stone, worn smooth in the middle where years of rain have washed over it.

I don't know what you say to a woman you've never met. But standing here beside her son, I want to say something anyway.

"He's difficult," I tell her. My mouth pulls at one corner. "Impossible, actually."

I glance at Adrian. One side of his mouth has gone crooked.

"But don't worry about him." I tighten my fingers around his. "I'll keep him on his toes."

There's a sound beside me, low in his chest, and it takes me a second to understand that he's laughing.

He turns his hand and pulls mine up against his ribs and holds it there. He doesn't say anything, and for the first time since I walked into that bathroom and shut the door, it's easy.

We stand there a while longer.

Then he lets out a breath and squeezes my fingers.

"We'll be late."

I let him lead me back down the hill.