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
EvelynThomas was sitting on the island, shirtless, both feet dangling off the side like a bored lifeguard. He held a bloody dish towel pressed to his chest.I pulled the light in closer, flicked on the under-cabinet LEDs, and started unwrapping the bandage.He didn’t react, not even when I caught a
AvaThe door clicked closed behind them, but I didn’t move, didn’t even blink. I just watched the seam between the jamb and the frame, tracking the pressure of each footstep as it faded down the hall.Mother’s stride was impossible to miss, sharp and angry with a drag at the end like she was rolling
Evelyn“Evelyn.” The name hit raw, like it’d been yanked out of her by a cop at a traffic stop.“I need your help. It’s about Ava.” I didn’t waste time. There was no point.A silence spread out over the line, wide as a salt flat. I counted every second. It made it easier to keep the voice level.At
AvaHe put a big, bleeding hand on the leader's shoulder and herded him toward the side door, the other mercenaries falling into a double column behind.The whole group moved as one organism, but every eye in the pack flicked to me as they passed. There was hunger there, and fear, and the kind of cu







