This was it. Jules wouldn’t have been this avoidant if everything was alright with her brother. If he was alive. Even if he’d made it without a limb, she would have said something about it. Her difficulty offering an answer showed that the worst had happened.

Camilla made a noise that was hard to describe, but which would have made any human capable of empathy feel uncomfortable. It was a cry of grief, one that died somewhere in her throat because her lungs, worn as they were, couldn’t reach the full capacity of the sound.

She was normally very expressive with her emotions, but she couldn’t at this moment. It didn’t feel right to Marcus’ memory. Furthermore, she had always been expressive when it came to happy emotions, or crying after a play with a sad ending. She hadn’t experienced loss since her father’s death and, while that was sad, they had never had the sort of relationship she had with Marcus.

“Oh that is so absurd,” Camilla finally said and wiped her tears away frantically. “It’s so absurd that he would die this way!”