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"Check your chest. Now."My hand flew to my sternum before I was even fully awake. I sucked in a breath. It rattled like a bag of dry gravel. The brand—the jagged 'X'—didn't just glow anymore. The skin around it had turned a sick, necrotic purple. Black veins branched out from the center, crawling toward my collarbone like ink dropped in water. It pulsed. A low, wet throb that made my vision swim with static."It's spreading," I wheezed. I tried to sit up, but the world tilted. My stomach flipped. I tasted copper and bile."Don't move." Evangeline’s voice was right at my ear. "Your heart rate spikes, the timer speeds up. Stay down."We were in a flooded basement. The water was ankle-deep, oily and smelling of old grease. Rain drummed against the street above, muffled by concrete. A high-pitched hum—the sound of Blackwood drones—vibrated through the walls. Every few seconds, a red light swept through the street-level grates, slicing the darkness of our hole."You're shaking." I reached
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"Get up, you heavy bastard."Evangeline’s voice cracked. Her boots slid in the black muck of the gutter. My teeth vibrated in their sockets. A low hum, like a hornet trapped in my skull, surged from the red mark on my chest. Every beat of my heart sent a fresh jolt of heat through my ribs. I couldn't breathe. My lungs were full of wet ash."Kai! Look at me!"I slumped. My chin hit the sludge. The rain tasted like copper and old batteries. Through the gray blur of the downpour, the red light on my chest pulsed. Faster. Brighter. Each flash matched the throb in my temples."Twenty-three hours," I wheezed. I couldn't lift my head. My 190-pound frame felt like a bag of wet cement. "Go, Evie. Just... go.""Shut the fuck up."She grabbed my collar. Her face was a mask of snot and rain. She yanked. My shoulder popped. I groaned, a wet, rattling sound. She hauled me backward, her heels digging into the mud, her pregnant belly a hard, sharp curve against her shredded dress."The crawlspace," s
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"You’re alive."The words tore out of my throat, raw and jagged. I stumbled through the black slush of the alley, my boots splashing in puddles that tasted like ash. The warehouse was a skeleton of fire behind me. Orange ribs of timber collapsed into the basement, sending a spray of sparks toward the bruised purple sky.Evangeline didn't look up. She sat on a rusted dumpster, her knees pulled to her chest. She was drenched. Mud caked her thighs. Her fingers were curled tight around something small and heavy."I had to." She held her hand out.A severed finger sat in her palm. It was pale, bloodless, the bone jutting out like a jagged tooth. On the knuckle sat the Blackwood signet ring—a heavy gold slab carved with the weeping willow."Elinor?" I stopped three feet away. The heat from the warehouse fire licked at my back, but I was shivering."She wouldn't give me the ring." Evangeline’s voice was hollow. She wiped snot from her lip with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of Elinor
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"Eat the apple, Evangeline. It’s crisp. A bit tart. Like the choices we make when we're desperate."Elinor sat on a crate of rusted machine parts, her back straight, her silk suit pristine despite the grime of the warehouse. She moved the silver knife with surgical precision. A long, unbroken spiral of red skin curled away from the blade. She didn't look at me. She didn't look at the gun in my hand."I’m not hungry." I gripped the handle of the 9mm until the checkering bit into my palm. My hip throbbed. Every pulse of my blood felt like a hammer hitting the wound Marcus had stitched shut."You should be. You’re eating for two now. Or is it three? The growth is so fast, I lose track of the caloric requirements." Elinor sliced a pale wedge. She held it out on the tip of the blade. "Take it.""I'm not touching anything you've breathed on." I shifted my weight. The floorboards groaned."Such a waste of energy." Elinor popped the slice into her own mouth. She chewed slowly. Methodically. "
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"Take the deal, Kai. Or watch her hollow out."Marcus leaned against the reinforced door of the warehouse, tossing a small, vacuum-sealed vial of blue fluid. He caught it with a snap. The light from the SWAT floodlights made the liquid look like neon poison. Behind him, the "Template" father stood as still as a statue, his eyes fixed on some point in the air six inches in front of my face."What is that?" I gripped my gun. My finger twitched against the trigger guard."The only thing keeping her organs from turning into mush." Marcus held the vial up. "That heart rate we heard? Two hundred and sixty? That's the sound of the baby eating her alive. Accelerated growth requires accelerated fuel. Without this stabilizer, she won't make it to Friday. Neither will the successor.""You're lying." I looked at Evangeline. She was hunched over the cot, clutching her stomach. Her face was gray. Her skin looked paper-thin."Ask the Doc. Oh, wait. You can't. I had him erased five minutes ago." Marc
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"You're six weeks pregnant."The words hit the air like a wet slab of meat. I didn't breathe. Evangeline didn't move. She just lay there on the moldy cot, her face the color of the concrete floor. The disgraced surgeon—Doc, they called him, though his Blackwood medical license was a blackened memory—wiped a blood-stained hand on his apron. He didn't look at us. He looked at the flickering screen of the portable ultrasound."Six weeks," I repeated. My mouth tasted like rust. My brain started the math. The frantic, desperate math of a man trying to figure out if he just inherited a kingdom or signed his own execution."Six weeks is a long time in a war, Kai." Evangeline’s voice was a whisper. She didn't look at the screen. She looked at the ceiling, at the water stains that looked like maps of countries we’d never see."It’s not mine." The words came out before I could stop them.She flinched. Like I’d slapped her."Is that what you want?" She turned her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed,
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