Page 44 of The Fabric of our Souls

“It’s just a field,” I murmur with confusion. Why come here at four a.m.?

Liam bends down and points as he says with a somber voice, “Look again, sunshine.”

That name rolls off his tongue so perfectly I can’t even pretend to be annoyed about it. My eyes return to the field, and just as they do, the moonlight showers down as if the pale light is liquid. A thousand little white blooms illuminate at once, returning the light back to the sky and the world around them.

My heart stills in my chest, a quiet, somber little thing in these wee hours of the night, desperately clinging to hope that the daylight steals away from me.

“Moonflowers,” Liam says with admiration. They mean something to him, and as much as he seems happy to gaze down on them, there’s melancholy imbued in his eyes.

“You didn’t need to show me this.” I feel bad. It really seems like something private. “I’m sorry for following you out here. I didn’t want to see you hurt again.”

Liam shrugs. A breeze shifts his hair to the left, and sorrow gleams in his eyes as he stares at the flowers. “It was never my own to share. Those before us… they made this place.”

Those before us.

“What happened to them?” I murmur, unsure if I should be asking. “Those before… did they get better and leave? Did they find the remedy for their minds?” I bend down and let my fingers trail the edge of the beautiful moonlit petals. They’re soft and still hold drops of blissful water from the rain.

“I hope they found their cures—I’d like to think that they got better,” he says as he moves to stand beside me. “Anyway, I stumbled across this place a few months ago. No one was taking care of it, so I figured those who did have long since moved on from Harlow Sanctum. Their absence from this place haunts me, yet at the same time gives me hope. Their rings are a symbol of perseverance.”

He turns and looks at me with weary eyes. I feel that soul-draining ebb, that exhausting pull, the never-ending search we seem to share for that silly little thing called hope.

To find ourcure.

“Their rings?” I mumble in a daze.

Liam nods and plucks one of the moonflowers, placing it in my hand. “You asked me about the ring I left you at the hospital,” he mutters sincerely. I figured he didn’t hear me at the time because he was staring at my breasts and never replied.

I nod.

“I found three of them. I kept one, Lanston has the other, and then I decided you should have the last.”

My chest tightens at his admission, the moonflower warming in my palm as my heart beats faster.

“Whyme?”

His eyes narrow with longing as he guides his forefinger up my wrist. A small wave of pain spreads across my forearm and he winces at the way I flinch. “You have this air about you. It calls to me like a beacon. The nurses spoke of how much pity they felt for the patient in room forty-seven, being so young and beautiful, but cursed with a horribly unwell mind.”

I clench my teeth. Everyone pities me, everyone except—

“I knew then I had to see you for myself. To see if you were indeed pitiful, though I had a feeling you wouldn’t be.” His blue eyes caress my face as if I’m a lost treasure he’s been searching the ends of the earth for. “No—I knew the moment I saw you.Youwere not to be pitied. Your mind is a beautiful and dangerous thing, Wynn, sick as it may be. But your soul illuminates the world around you, setting all else ablaze with your inevitable anguish.”

My clenched fist smothers the moonflower. My heart is both sinking and racing at the same time.

“I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you. You’ve wilted enough for the world. Don’t you think?” Liam’s smile and question fill every part of my weary soul. “It’s time to let go of the things that hurt.”

He extends his hand to me once more. I slip the flower I inadvertently crushed into my pocket before taking his hand. He warms my cold skin as he guides me to the center of the flowering field.

“Will you dance with me, Wynn?”

In my drenched, cold slippers, my oversized hoodie, and messy bed hair, I smile at him—really,trulysmile at him.

“Promise you’re not a vampire or werewolf?” I say as he pulls me closer to his chest.

His grin pulls up sarcastically. “And if I am?” He chuckles. Then his eyes turn serious. “I’ve been searching for that lost smile.”

I laugh as he wraps an arm around my waist and starts to twirl us through the field. It doesn’t take long to lose one of my slippers, but I don’t care. I don’t stop.

“Liam, thank you for being so weird.”

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