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
“Let him,” I said. “It’s not an airway issue.”He coughed again, the sound lower, more like a plea. Blood flecked his chin and the hollow of his neck, trailing into the blue veins that now mapped his entire upper body. He looked drowned.I eased a hand behind his shoulders, propping him up so the bl
AvaFalco led me past the fountain toward the back corner of the garden where the hedges grew wild and thick. Nobody came back here much—the groundskeeper mostly left it alone, said something about it being good for the birds. Made it private, though. I could still hear voices from the house but the
EvelynI hadn't slept. The clock on the wall said 6:47 AM and I was still sitting in my study staring at paperwork I hadn't read a single word of. The numbers blurred together, meaningless.Footsteps came down the hall. Too fast, too frantic.The door burst open. Sofia, still in pajamas, Maya right
HildaBy the third try, my knuckles should have stopped stinging, but the ache only got worse. I rested my fist against the painted wood and rapped again, sharper, letting the echo do whatever guilt-tripping it pleased.No answer. Not even a creak.I rolled my shoulders, glanced left and right, then







