“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize the Luna hadpany.” She set the linens down on the end of my bed and looked like she had no intention of being the one to leave.


    “I should get going,” Liam said, standing. He squeezed my hand gently. “We’ll talk moreter, okay?”


    I nodded, although I doubted there was much left to say. Liam was a good friend, but he didn’t


    understand. He never would.


    After Liam left, Sarah hastily moved to fluff my pillows before I could even sit up. The movement jostled my head, making me wince as pain shot through my skull where I’d mmed it on the tiles the other night.


    “Careful,” I muttered.


    “Sorry.” Sarah giggled. “You just look so fragile lying there. Like you might break if I breathe on you wrong.”


    I bit back my first response, which would have involved several colorful words about where she could shove her observations. Instead, I just said tly, “I’m recovering from a head injury.”


    “Of course you are.” Sarah moved around the bed and began unceremoniously ripping the linens off even though I was stillying there. “Must be nice, having everyone wait on you hand and foot. I wish I didn’t have to work for a living!”


    “Sarah,” I said slowly, warningly, “I don’t appreciate your tone.”


    She paused in her bustling, looking at me with those bright blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Luna. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”


    But there was disrespect in every line of her body every fake smile, every word that came out of her mouth. She’d been doing this for days now-ensuring she was just polite enough that I couldn’t formallyin, but rude enough to make her distaste for me obvious.


    I was certain that Alexander and Gabriel had put her up to this.


    “Just… please be more careful,” I said, too tired to make a bigger deal out of it.


    Sarah nodded and moved to my vanity, where she began rearranging the bottles and jewelry boxes. I watched her nervously as she handled my things, some of which were delicate or had


    sentimental value.


    “Actually,” I said, “you don’t need to clean that area. I can take care of it myself when I’m feeling better.”


    “Oh, but it’s such a mess,” Sarah said. “Really, Luna, when was thest time you organized


    any of this? It’s like a tornado went through here”


    “It’s fine the way it is.”


    “No, no, I insist.” Sarah picked up a crystal perfume bottle that had belonged to my grandmother, sniffed it, then wrinkled her nose at the scent. “A Luna should have higher standards. What would people think if they saw your vanity looking like this? That you’re a slob?”


    My temper red. “Put that down. I told you to leave it alone.”


    “I’m just trying to help-‘


    “I said put it down.”


    Sighing, Sarah set the perfume bottle down with a sharp click, hard enough that I was surprised the ss didn’t crack. Then she reached for the music box sitting in the corner of the vanity.


    “Don’t touch that,” I said sharply, sitting bolt upright despite the pain in


    my head.


    But Sarah had already picked it up, holding it by its delicate base instead of supporting it properly. It was small and old, made of carved wood with intricate flowers painted on the lid.


    It was my mother’s. It yed a luby when you opened it, and I liked to imagine my mother humming it to me when I was a baby, although I was so young when she died that I couldn’t remember. I didn’t even know the sound of her voice or if she liked to sing.


    “This old thing?” Sarah said, turning it over in her hands. “It’s so dusty. When was thest time you-”


    The music box slipped from her fingers.


    I watched in horror as it fell, seeming to move in slow motion as it tumbled toward the hardwood floor. The delicate wooden corners hit first, and I heard the sickening crack of wood splintering. The lid popped open on impact, and the tiny ballerina inside broke off from her post, spinning uselessly as the music box came to rest in three separate pieces.


    The melody it had yed for fifteen years was silenced forever,