Chapter 29. A Shattered Trust

Leila’s POV

The garden was supposed to be calming, but today its flowers seemed too bright, yellow bright, and the breeze seemed only to upset the cyclone building inside. My steps quickened, my mind reeled, but when I came around the corner, there was Mia, at the fountain. She had her back to me. And my heart started to sink right down into my gut.

The words finally looped and replayed in my brain—the words I had heard her say the other day, seemingly looped. So the words seared through me until all tensions and confusion boiled over.

“Mia,” I called her, and my voice edged close to being sharp involuntarily.

She shifted, turning to me: her face passed from surprise to something else that I couldn’t place. “Leila,” she answered in cool, almost distant terms.

There were unsaid words hanging thickly in the air between us. I have rehearsed this confrontation in my mind a hundred times, but standing here in front of her, there really was no way or p