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
SofiaIt wasn’t a slow thing, or a soft thing. There was no warning. Her lips crashed into mine, teeth scraping, tongue urgent and searching. She grabbed my waist and pulled me closer, skin sliding on skin. The water turned every touch into heat, every friction into fire.I froze. For a second, I th
SofiaI stood there, staring at the closed door, feeling the weight of the next six hours settle on my shoulders. She could turn again. Both you and Maya could be in danger.I let my head tip back, stared at the water stain on the ceiling, and let out a breath so long it emptied me out.“I miss Pari
Ava“What’s going on?” she asked. Her voice was low, but it vibrated with a tension I remembered from childhood: the voice she used when things were about to get very, very real.Levi didn’t turn. “She wants to leave,” he said, still watching me. “I’m trying to explain why that’s—”“Let her go.” Hil
SofiaReed would be here in five minutes, and Ava hadn’t moved in three hours. I knew because I was counting—at first the clock, then the way her back kept the same hunched angle against the desk, the way her legs pressed into the vinyl chair so hard the edge cut lines into her skin. Even her blinks







