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
So when Hilda left, I made sure to keep it that way,. I told myself it was for Ava’s good, but in this moment I realized how selfish it had been. I’d tried to erase the past instead of letting her grow around it.I sighed, and my ribs ached.Hilda stopped a few feet from the bed. She stared at Ava,
I shook him again, just enough to jostle. He moaned, then sucked in air like he’d been drowning. The color came back to his face, just a bit.“Come on, boss. Stay with me. Where’s the house?”He took a few more shallow breaths. For a minute I thought I’d have to go to one of the others, start this w
EvelynThe three of us stood at the door to Ava’s bedroom like the world’s most awkward SWAT team, nobody sure who should breach first. I put my hand on the handle, but before I could turn it, Hilda froze.She cocked her head, nostrils flaring. “Do you smell that?”I blinked, scanned the air. All I
HildaThe aftermath wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. It was worse.I stood at the edge of the lot and looked down at what thirty men with high-end rifles and paramilitary training turned into after two minutes with me.Not a single one of them would be walking away under their own power, not tonight.







