MasukAnd 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
AvaThe ceremony ended but nobody left. People clustered in small groups, voices low like the volume knob got turned down across the whole room. Staff circulated with tea and coffee that sat untouched on every surface.I tried to disappear into the corner by the windows, but Sofia and Maya followed.
AvaThe formal living room looked wrong. That was the first thing I noticed when I walked in to check the setup—everything was technically correct, but it still felt like a stage set, like we were all about to perform grief for an audience that didn't actually care.Thomas's photograph sat on the ea
AvaFalco sat beside me without asking, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him but not quite touching. For a minute he didn't say anything, just sat there like we were two people who happened to end up on the same bench by accident.I wiped my face with my sleeve, tried to pull mys
AvaI spent the rest of the day on my back, the way a beetle dies—arms and legs twisted, face pointed at the ceiling, unable to move unless I made myself. The light came through the blackout curtain in a single, sharp line and traced its way from my left foot up to my collarbone. I could feel it, bu







