Chapter 43

Briony was the last one awake. She’d traded her overalls for a mismatched suit—coat two sizes too big, sleeves rolled and stained—and sat on the roof picking at a tin of beans. She didn’t notice Carolina at first, or maybe she was just pretending not to, chewing slowly, eyes on the mist-shrouded towers. From this angle, the city could have been anything: a graveyard, a cathedral, an ugly diamond.

“Can’t sleep?” Carolina offered, settling down beside her.

Briony shifted, considered her. “I can sleep anywhere. Just don’t like to.” She scooped a spoonful of cold beans. “You’re not drinking. Kind of obvious what that means.”

Carolina let the accusation hang, testing how it fit her skin. “I’m not making it a thing.”

Briony shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Only question is: you gonna stay put, or you gonna run?”

“I’m not running,” Carolina said, and even she was surprised that it came out true.

Briony risked a smile, lips quirking. “So what’s it like?”

Carolina thought about the ball of cells inside her—how it wasn’t hope, or doom, just momentum. “It’s like being a spark in a powder room. Every choice counts for more than it used to.” She hesitated. “Do you hate me for it?”

Briony shook her head. “I never hated you. It’s just easier to storm a building when you don’t love the person inside it.”

Carolina nudged her, gentle. “You could have stormed upstairs. You didn’t.”

Briony nudged back, a little harder. “Wouldn’t be honest. Might as well see what you become.”

A quiet settled between them, cold and not unfriendly. Carolina realized she could breathe here, that she didn’t have to apologize for taking up space.

After a while, Briony rapped her tin against the rail. “Tomorrow we might have a visitor. Lyra’s—well, she says it’s an old friend. I’m not convinced.”

“She’s bringing them here?”

Briony nodded, eyes sly. “Might want to sharpen up. Could be a recruit. Could be trouble.”

Carolina watched a hawk circle above, limp and graceful. “I’ll handle it.”

Briony drained the last bean. “I know you will. You always do.” She rose, brushing off her knees. “Don’t get lost in the view,” she called over her shoulder, already halfway off the roof.

Carolina stayed, letting the wind ruffle her hair, tracing the shadows that limned every alley and story. If she squinted, she could see the slivered dawn, leaking gold between the blackout towers. A terrible beauty, Lyra once said, and maybe that was the best she could hope for.

*

True to Briony’s warning, the visitor arrived at high noon, escorted by Lyra and two of the “cubs” she’d taken under her batwing sarcasm. The stranger was short, thick-set, perfume of the distant hills still clinging to her threadbare parka. She carried a battered suitcase and a face like closed granite.

Lyra smiled too broadly, a warning flare. “Carolina, this is Riss. Riss, Carolina.”

Carolina sized her up. “We’ve never met.”

“No,” said Riss, “but I heard about you. Ruiner of ’Stadt, breaker of the old pack.”

“Tell me what you want,” Carolina said, because small talk was for children and spies.

Riss listened to the city for a second, then opened the suitcase. “I have books,” she said.

Carolina blinked. “You walked three days across the dead grid to bring us stories?”

“Not stories. Manuals. Repair guides, medicine for the machines. Stuff you can’t eat, but maybe it keeps you eating.” Riss slid the suitcase forward, panels and sheafs and even—god, even an old Nintendo manual, propped between anatomy texts and an 800-page repair guide for water turbines.

Carolina let her hand drift over the plastic, the paper. The books were precious. The knowledge was more precious. “You want protection,” Carolina said.

“Shared purpose,” Riss replied, with a shrug. “Your people make stuff work. My people don’t get shot for asking questions.”

Lyra looked bored, but Carolina could see the edge of hope in her. The wolves remembered the old world, but even they wanted to build.

Briony took the suitcase and did her own inventory, eyes flickering as she measured the worth. “Anything for trade?”

Riss nodded once. “If things settle. If your warband doesn’t tear itself apart first.”

Carolina smiled, teeth out. “We’re getting good at not dying.”

“Saw the smoke last night,” Riss said, then grinned. “Heard you were throwing some kind of party.”

“Practice for civilization,” Carolina said. “You’re welcome to crash.”

Riss set her jaw. “Maybe tomorrow. First: food, and quiet. Please.”

Lyra led her off, both already swapping rumors, and for the first time since the siege, Carolina understood that strangers could become friends, given enough time and hunger.

She wandered the long way back to headquarters, detouring through the market. Vendors hawked bruised root vegetables and hand-wound soap; a kid offered what might have been bootleg cigarettes, but could have been sticks. Carolina accepted one, just to keep up the pretense, and lingered by the river while she pretended to smoke.

Xander found her there, lips pressed thin, hair caught up in a ragged elastic.

“You made a friend,” he said.

“She brought books,” Carolina said. “That’s something.”

He watched her for a long time, then said, “You don’t have to do every single thing yourself.”

She wanted to ask who else would, but bit her tongue. “I like to know how things work,” she offered.

Xander half-smiled. “Even people?”

Carolina considered that. “Especially people. I never forget where the wires go.”

He reached out, soft and brave, and let his hand settle on hers. “We’ll make it through. You know that, right?”

For a second, there was only the river, and the two of them, and something light as string tied between their hands.

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “This time, I do.”

*

That night, instead of another council meeting, they all gathered in the school’s gymnasium. Someone had scrounged up a makeshift projector, and Riss—the new stranger—had offered to show a movie in return for soup. The walls still shimmered with ghostly murals: tigers and unicorns and jets of powder-blue math.

Lyra sat cross-legged, elbows on her knees, lips pressed in a line to keep from laughing at the absurdity. Briony and Xander lounged together, arms folded, not touching but breathing in rhythm. Even Riss, the hardest of the hard, let herself smile as the movie began.

It was something old, black and white, dubbed poorly in a language no one here spoke. But the action told itself: a girl and a dog, a road paved with wishes. The electricity flickered, but they hooted and cheered every time the screen went dark, improvising dialogue, inventing motives, finding themselves in the dumb, stubborn hope of fiction.

Carolina watched her city assembled in the dark—her wolves, her broken friends, the children who dared to run—and for the first time, the ache in her jaw went slack, and the world felt, if not perfect, at least tolerable.

In the morning, she’d have to figure out food supplies, and security, and what to do about the next ambitious stranger who showed up at their gates. But tonight, she let herself laugh, let herself want, let herself hope.

Maybe life, like legend, was less about the ending than the mess between.

And as the credits rolled, and someone set off a real, honest-to-god sparkler in the back row, Carolina felt the first, giddy kick beneath her ribs. It hurt, and it was beautiful, and she let herself believe it was good.