I thought getting into the room was the hard part. I was wrong. Getting Lord Bastion to listen was like trying to explain calculus to a brick wall.
"You have to listen to me!" I insisted, planting my feet on his plush carpet. "Your daughter isn't just acting out. She is hearing voices. She is seeing shadows that move on their own. She is being targeted by the same corruption that took your wife!"
Bastion flinched. He stood up from his desk, his face a mask of terrified exhaustion. He wouldn't look me in the eye. He looked at the books on his desk—tomes with titles like The Severing of Ties and Containment Protocols.
"You do not understand," Bastion rasped, his voice trembling. "It is contagious, Nanny. It eats the mind first. Then the soul. Then the body."
He looked at me then, his eyes dull brass and full of despair.
"I cannot save her," he whispered. "I can only contain her. Until the end."
