Chapter 279: barbs
"I’m sorry. For the fights, the barbs, the walls we built. For every time Tila snapped or pushed you away. She never meant to hurt you. It was just... survival. But please... forgive her. Forgive me. We were both so lost, clinging to each other in the dark. I was her shield, her voice when she couldn’t speak. But now..." She choked, a hand pressing to her chest as if to hold herself together.
"Now she’s finding her light without me."
Freya stepped closer now, slowly, her voice gentler than Rhea had ever heard it, laced with a tremor of her own.
She reached out, hesitating before placing a hand on Lila’s arm—cold, so cold. "Lila... we don’t understand what’s happening to you, but you’re scaring us. Talk to us. Let us help."
"You don’t have to understand," Lila said, managing a watery smile through the tears, her black eyes shimmering with a mix of sorrow and peace.
"Just take care of her. That’s all I ask. Promise me. Promise you’ll be there when she stumbles, when the memories creep back in the night. Tell her... tell her it’s okay to cry, to be weak sometimes. That she’s not alone anymore."
Rhea blinked fast, tears slipping down her own cheeks now, her voice thick.
"You’re not making sense—wait, are you dying? Is that what this is? Lila, don’t—don’t do this."
"No," Lila murmured, her body trembling more violently, her fingers going still against the sheets as if the strength was draining from her limbs.
"I’m fading. There’s a difference. Dying... that’s for the living. I was never truly alive. Not like her. I was a piece of her soul, born from the pain, the loneliness. A shadow given form to protect what was breaking." The dim aura of power that always lingered around her began to flicker, like candlelight in a dying wind, casting erratic shadows across the room.