ANMELDEN"NOTHING IS MORE INSULTING THAN BEING IGNORED YOUR ENTIRE LIFE, ONLY TO BECOME VALUABLE WHEN SOMEONE POWERFUL WANTS YOU."KIVAI woke up certain I had dreamed it, that maybe everything that has been happening had just been a lie or figment of my imagination. But nah it wasn’t this was real all of this.I lay in Paige's bed in Paige's room and looked at the ceiling and told myself that the shape of the last twenty-four hours was too strange to be real and that ordinary life would have reasserted itself by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs.Then I walked downstairs.And understood immediately that ordinary life had not reasserted itself. Had in fact departed the premises entirely and left something in its place that I did not have a category for.A servant nearly collided with her own tray when she saw me appear on the landing. She recovered, straightened, and looked at me with the specific expression of someone who has been given new information about a situation and is in th
"The cruel thing about losing someone is that you usually realize their value after you've already let them go."FABIANThe gates closed behind me with a sound that was entirely ordinary and felt like something else entirely.I stood beside my car and did not get in. Just stood there with my hand on the door handle and looked at the estate, at the walls and the lights and the garden hidden somewhere behind them where Kiva had just told me to leave and meant it in a way she had never meant anything she said to me before.The same estate I had visited more times than I could count. The same gates I had driven through thinking about her, about what I was going to say, about the way she looked when she saw me coming. The same walls behind which she had spent her whole life being invisible to everyone except me.Or so I had believed.A short and humorless sound left me. If someone had told me four weeks ago that Kiva would stand in that garden and shove me and tell me to leave and mean it
"THE WORST KIND OF HEARTBREAK IS WHEN THE PERSON WHO BROKE YOU TRIES TO SAVE YOU FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF BREAKING YOU."KIVAFabian.The recognition arrived before the shock did, my body understanding the voice a half second before my mind caught up with it, and in that half second every muscle I had went rigid. Then the shock arrived. Then, immediately behind it, moving through the shock like something that had been waiting for permission, came the anger.His hand was still over my mouth. His arm was still around me, pulling me back against him with the specific urgency of someone who had decided that proximity was the first requirement of this conversation and had not considered asking."Kiva." His voice was low against my ear, urgent in the way of someone managing a situation they had not fully thought through. "If I let go, promise me you won't scream."I did not deliberate.I bit him.Hard enough to matter, hard enough to mean it, and the sound he made was involuntary and immedi
"THE MOST DANGEROUS THING ABOUT MONSTERS ISN'T THEIR CLAWS. IT'S THE WAY THEY MAKE YOU WONDER IF THEY'RE REALLY MONSTERS AT ALL."KIVAI could not stop staring at him.The conversation was technically over. I had said yes and he had said thank you and the logical next step was for one or both of us to leave the room. Neither of us had moved.The silence sitting between us was not the silence of people who had nothing to say. It was the silence of people who were doing something else, and I could not name what we were doing except that it involved him looking at me with that complete, unhurried attention and me trying very hard to look somewhere other than his eyes and failing consistently."I'll be returning to the Northern Gates tonight."The statement arrived simply, not as an announcement or an explanation, just information offered in the way of someone who had decided it was relevant.I nodded. I was not sure what the appropriate response was. Goodbye seemed inadequate. Safe trave
"SOMETIMES THE CRUELEST PRISONS ARE THE ONES DISGUISED AS CHOICES."KIVAThe silence that followed the closing of the door was a different quality than any silence I had experienced in this house before.Every silence in the Kiraman estate had always carried something in it, the residue of whatever had just been said or done, the particular held quality of a house where quiet was usually the prelude to something worse. This silence was different. It was simply quiet. The two of us in a room, and the house outside the door no longer having any weight.I stood near the doorway and he sat in my father's chair and we looked at each other.I had been afraid of this moment since Giovanni had delivered the news. I had imagined it in various configurations during the days leading up to it, running through every version, trying to prepare for whatever shape the Decaulion would take when he appeared in front of me as a real and present thing rather than a name that made rooms go quiet.None of
"The problem with pretending to be someone else is that eventually the real person walks into the room."DAMIENI hated the Western Gates.Not because of the territory itself, which was functional and unremarkable in the way of places that had been managed adequately for generations without ever being managed with any particular vision. Not because of the roads or the guards or the architecture of the estate I was being driven toward. Because every hour I spent here felt like an hour of knowing she was somewhere in this territory and not having located her precisely, which was a new and specific variety of restlessness that I had no previous experience of and no particular patience for.The gates opened before the car stopped.The guards moved with the specific urgency of people who have received advance notice of something they are afraid of and have decided that maximum cooperation is their best available strategy. I stepped out without acknowledging any of it, because acknowledgmen
"SOMETIMES THE ANSWER YOU NEED IS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU WANT TO LOOK." DAMIENThe city lights blurred beyond the tinted windows in long smears of gold and white, the Western Gates doing what cities did at night, continuing without concern for anything happening inside a black SUV moving through it
"The most dangerous questions are the ones you never thought to ask." KIVAI told myself I was overthinking.I repeated it on the drive home like something I was trying to make true through repetition alone. The robbery had been terrifying. Someone had died right in front of me, close enough that
"Some people spend their whole lives searching for a miracle. I spent mine searching for a girl behind a veil."DAMIENThe first thing I noticed was that she was shaking.Not the way everyone else in the store was shaking. The people around us were shaking from fear, from adrenaline, from the immed
“NOTHING HURTS THAN WATCHING THE MAN YOU LOVE WANT SOMEONE ELSE…”KIVA.The entire store had become something unrecognizable.Screaming from every direction, overlapping and desperate, the kind of sound that bypassed thought entirely and went straight to the body. Glass shattered somewhere behind m







