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
Evelyn"Just please, get her out of there."I stood watching Hilda on her knees, and all the fight drained from me. How was I supposed to lash out at someone completely broken?Her shoulders shook with each sob, her face streaked with tears. The fierce woman who had slaughtered what could have easil
MargaretThe maggots started at my toes.I could feel each one. Tiny mouths working their way through dead flesh that used to be my feet. Except I wasn't dead. I was awake, aware, feeling every bite as they ate their way up my ankles. The cave walls pressed in, slick with moisture that dripped onto
"Evelyn fit in well enough when she arrived," Maya's voice went smaller. "That was good. Really good. She needed it. Needed somewhere that wouldn't ask questions about why she showed up half-dead with—" She stopped. "Well. You probably know that story."I didn't, but I wasn't going to ask.Maya look
She let me pull her back, but her eyes stayed on the bull. Professional curiosity overriding caution."I've seen this before," I repeated, and the words felt like glass in my throat. My chest went tight. I turned, coughing. "Fuck. I've been so stupid. If I hadn't ignored it..."Robin's hand found my







