COWRIEThe market square was packed by midday, all noise, elbows and the smell of fried yam. I weaved between stalls, ducked past a cart stacked with soaps and herbs, ignored the familiar greetings tossed in my direction.I only came because Mum said we needed peppers and rice, apparently she won't
GAVINSolenne found me by the eastern cliff after the rites ended, barefoot, skirts hitched in one hand. She sat beside me on the flat stone, legs swinging over the drop like she couldn’t feel the fall calling. Her magic pulsed low and constant, humming into my skin, into the crack in my bones I had
GAVINThe bone chamber breathed with fire. I sat with my father’s cloak folded over my knees, one hand around the iron medallion he wore when the arrow took him, the other pressed against the dirt floor, tracing the ridge where the last Alpha's blood had soaked into stone.The fire pit in front of m
LILALyric plopped beside me, her braid falling over her shoulder, face glowing, “She’s crawling. I mean, really crawling now,” she said, lifting Solenne’s discarded pacifier and wiping it on her sleeve.Cowrie crawled beside her, copying her form, elbows tucked, legs pumping, yelling sound effects
LILA“She’s going to have your temper too,” I added, pulling the sheet up to my waist, too tired to sit, too full to sleep. “And probably your refusal to listen.”He smiled at that, the first real one I’d seen since the pain started, and turned to me with something brighter in his eyes. “Then we’ll
LILAI carried her through nine moons, each one brighter than the last, and my body changed; soft where I’d once been taut, full where I’d once been hollow, every dream thick with her heartbeat.Lyric stayed near me from the first cramp to the last swollen turn of my belly, no matter the hour, no ma