She felt as though it was meant to be a message, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant. She stared up at the ceiling she couldn’t even see in this darkness, and finally settled on gratitude.If she’d ever needed a hug from her mother, it was now, confronted by this unexpected part of her mother’s legacy, confronted by the Atrum Core and tangled up somehow with a shape-shifting Sentinel who asked everything of himself—and, it seemed, everything of her.She reached out to him, an action quickly grown to habit, just to touch his presence, which was as much as she could do…and could do it at all only because of that impossible hum persisting between them.If only she’d had some inkling of those unintended side effects when she’d laid the incantation on the herbs, or when she’d laid the herbs along his gums—or when she’d failed to duck his lightning-swift paw.Right. Because then she’d surely have turned and walked away, leaving him to die.Dammit. This had been her choice.
