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
DamonThe rope cut through what was left of my shoulder as I pulled. Each step up the hill sent fire through my feet—blisters forming, bursting, forming again on the hot stone. The boulder scraped against the ground behind me, the sound drowning out everything except my own breathing."Ava," I mutte
My legs gave out. I fell to my knees, a sound escaping me that I barely recognized as my own voice."I'm sorry," I said, the words inadequate, pathetic. "Evelyn, I—" My voice cracked. "I—"She turned the wheelchair to face me. Her expression was perfectly still, perfectly composed. She looked at me
Damon"Ava!"My throat burned as I screamed her name. Everything slowed down as I watched her small body collapse, her face twisted in pain. Hilda caught her before she hit the ground—she was already right there beside her. The same woman who had ripped my eye out yesterday now cradled my daughter w
Robin"Miss Hilda, please stop... Let him go..."The small voice cut through the room like nothing else could have. Everyone froze—Hilda with her thighs still locked around Damon's throat, the guards with their weapons half-drawn, me with my mouth open around words that suddenly didn't matter.Ava s







