GUYS!!!! SOMETIMES I HATE MY IMAGINATION!!!!!
Okay, so imagine this:
The Neverseen attack Tiergan's house. Tiergan is hurt, and Linh even more so. Physic manages to save her, but she has scars. She's condemned to bed rest for weeks. Sophie and the others make sure to keep her updated on things, and Wylie comes by often, doing his best to lift her spirits. It doesn't do much. The team moral is low. With the Neverseen so far ahead, such a random attack seems like a diversion, but nobody's sure what they're supposed to be distracted from.
But Linh knows. With nothing to do but stare at her wall for days, she easily puts together the pieces.
They came after her to punish her brother. Whatever he's doing, they don't like it. They're trying to pound him into submission, make him realize they mean good on their threat--one wrong move, and Linh suffers.
She hates it. She knows Tam better than anyone--the only way to break him is through her. She's his weak point--his only weak point. As long as she was at risk, he'd work himself to death to keep them happy. His safety and well-being would go out the window. He'd submit to whatever they wanted, as long as she was safe.
It was the only way to break him.
But she'd seen Keefe when he came back. He wasn't broken--just bent, but nothing that couldn't be hammered back into place. Tam was just as strong as he was, if not stronger after years of protecting Linh, defending them both and making sure that he was unmovable, no matter what their parents threw at him. Tam figured he owed Linh that much, she knew. He owed her for the tiny blows that slipped through the walls he'd built around her, the pricks he couldn't protect her from. As long as Linh was in danger, so was he--not just from the Neverseen, but from himself, and the guilt she knew would be pounding through him as soon as he heard the news.
It had been her idea to leave him there. She knew it, and she had accepted it. It was what Tam would've wanted. He never would've forgiven her if she put herself in danger in order to save him, and never would've forgiven himself for letting it happen.
She'd thought he could handle it. She still thought that. Her brother was a natural chameleon, adapting to any environment to survive. Linh knew he could survive. He could make it back. He would make it back.
But coming back was different than coming back unchanged.
Linh took the thought in with the grim acceptance she had learned from her years of criticism. It was true, it was real, and if they didn't stop it, there would soon be nothing they could do.
Linh had never been one for self-pity--unlike Sophie, who was practically drowning in it. She knew exactly what she deserved, and she knew what was happening; and those hardly ever overlapped.
But finding friends, another family? She'd never expected that. Having her brother be happy for once? Even more unusual.
But she'd always held on to hope. The hope that things would get better, that they would finally get what they deserved--a simple chance at happiness. That was what got them through three years of Exillium, of yelling and disappointment, of locked doors and a constant pressure that makes you want to burst.
Hope. Hope was all Linh and her brother had left. And if the Neverseen thought they could take that from her as well, they had another thing coming.