LOGINAnd every single person was walking.Everyone. The men from my truck, from all the trucks, and beyond them more, spilling out of side streets and doorways, hundreds, then more than I could count, every one of them moving the same way at the same slow even pace toward the blue light, and not one of t
SofiaThe thing nobody tells you about stowing away in the back of a wolf's supply truck is that wolves do not believe in shock absorbers.I'd been folded between a crate that smelled like gun oil and a stack of canvas duffels for going on four hours, knees up under my chin, one hand knotted around
AvaI came back into my own body the way you come up from under cold water. All at once, lungs grabbing, except the water was me, and I'd been drowning in myself longer than I knew.For a second there was no up. Too much arrived at once. After the white nothing of the place with Catherine, the world
"Alexander."My name, in the low voice, gone thin at the edges now. A command. Come. Hold the vessel. Put your hands on it and hold it still.The wall in my chest told my feet to move. A year of habit told them to move. I took one step up toward the seat. My body did it the way my body did everythin
AlexanderI had spent my whole life learning to read the exact moment a thing breaks, and the goddess wearing my bride was beginning to break, and I could not turn my head to look at her.That was the cruelty of the wall she'd built in me. It let me see everything and touch nothing. I stood where sh
"Ava." I said it out loud, to a concrete wall, and it came apart in my mouth. "I've got you. I'm here. I've got you, baby. I've got you."She couldn't hear the words. She never could. But she could feel a hand close around her in the dark, the way I'd once felt hers close around me from a hundred mi
Ava"Everything alright?" Falco asked, stopping a few feet away. His eyes flicked between us, taking in Levi's inside-out shirt, the pine needles in my hair."Fine," I said. "What's the situation?""Movement to the north. Maybe half a mile out." He gestured back the way he'd come. "We need to move."
EvelynAva stood up.Such a simple movement, but it changed everything. The way she rose from her chair wasn't hurried or dramatic. Just smooth, deliberate, like she'd been planning this exact moment.She looked at Hilda first. A long, steady look that made Hilda shift in her seat. Then her eyes mov
HildaI'd worn a path in the carpet.Back and forth across the room, from the window to the door, trying to work off the restless energy that had been building since Alexander dropped his bombshell. Ava was here. Evelyn was here. Both of them captured, both of them in Alexander's hands.I stopped at
Ava"SELENE!"I was still screaming when something grabbed my collar and yanked backward.The world flipped. Dark to light, standing to falling. I hit ground flat on my back, impact knocking every bit of air from my lungs.Sweat drenched me. Cold, clammy, stinking of adrenaline and fear. My shirt st







