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
AvaI hit the ground hard. My knees must have given out first, but I didn’t feel anything—not at first. Just a rush of heat behind my ears, then a thick wave of nausea as my face smacked into Maya’s arm.She caught me before I could eat glass, her hands like vices on my shoulders. “Whoa, whoa—Ava, h
MayaThe second I demanded an answer, the whole room went radioactive with awkward. It wasn’t even like anyone tried to talk over me. Sofia did a speedrun of her text notifications, which didn’t even light up. Levi just kept his eyes on the far wall, like he was doing a deep meditative breath in the
“Ava,” I called, but she didn’t stop. Just bolted, clutching the banister, bare feet silent on the wood.I turned on Levi, my voice already three clicks higher than normal. “Dude, what are you—let me past!”He shook his head, not mean, not even apologetic, either. “She needs a minute. Best to let he
SofiaI spent most of the night in the waiting area, hunched in one of those awful modern chairs that’s all angles and nowhere to actually sit. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The line of red on my palm—Maya’s blood, I realized only later—wouldn’t come off no matter how many times I scrubbed it agai







