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
AvaHilda's hands caught my waist. "I've got you."She lifted me down and took the sugar jar from my hands. "Next time, just tell me if you can't reach.""I almost had it.""I know you did." She smiled and set the jar on the counter. "But I'd rather help you than have you fall and crack your head op
AvaI was still on the ground, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my ears, everywhere.Miss Hilda stood there like something broken. Her red eyes fixed straight ahead at where Damon was trying to get up in the hallway. Not seeing. Just staring with those damaged, bloody eyes.
Hilda's face had gone pale. She was still staring at me with that look. Like she was seeing a ghost.I sighed and walked back toward her. "Let's just forget about it."I was turning to leave the kitchen when someone knocked on the door.Both of us froze.Hilda's head turned toward the door. She snif
AvaNobody moved.The silence pressed down on all of us. Heavy and suffocating.Then slowly, Hilda's face shifted. Her frown deepening. She looked down at me. "Where did you hear that word?"I stopped. My mind went blank. Shit. I'd cursed. Out loud. As a five-year-old.It was hard keeping this up. A







