FAZER LOGINChapter 182RIVERAHe sat up. "Why?""Because I want to make sure you're safe while I figure out what's going on.""Is the lady downstairs dangerous?"I thought about how to answer that."I don't know yet," I said. "But I want you safe while I find out. Can you do that for me?"He nodded. Already swinging his legs off the bed, already moving to the door with the serious efficiency of a child who'd been given a task he understood was important."Three knocks," he said. "And you say it's you.""Exactly that," I said.I watched him lock the door. Heard the click of it."Daddy?" His voice through the door."Still here.""Find her," he said. "Find the real Mummy."I stood in the hallway outside his locked door and breathed for a moment.Bianca was not in this house.The woman downstairs was a doppelganger—built from her hair and her memories and whatever Voss's practitioners could distill from those things into a convincing physical replacement. Good enough to fool a hospital colleague. Go
Chapter 181Rivera POV And I had sat across a kitchen table from a woman who wasn't Bianca and told myself I was tired.My son had known in Silver Moon.I'd known something was wrong tonight and had explained it away.The wrongness I'd felt at the kitchen table—the absence of the particular gravity that existed between Bianca and me, the thing that was made of time and honesty and the specific history of two people who had seen each other clearly. The absence of the breathing-out sound when she'd held Louis at the end of his bath.I hadn't known what I was feeling. Louis had known exactly what he was feeling and had named it with the precision of someone who'd been paying close attention to the right things.I put my hand on his shoulder. He was tense under it—the tension of a child who'd been carrying something too heavy for several days and was waiting to find out if the adult could take some of the weight."You did right," I said. "Telling me.""Is Mummy okay?" he asked.The quest
Chapter 180Rivera POV And I had sat across a kitchen table from a woman who wasn't Bianca and told myself I was tired.My son had known in Silver Moon.I'd known something was wrong tonight and had explained it away.The wrongness I'd felt at the kitchen table—the absence of the particular gravity that existed between Bianca and me, the thing that was made of time and honesty and the specific history of two people who had seen each other clearly. The absence of the breathing-out sound when she'd held Louis at the end of his bath.I hadn't known what I was feeling. Louis had known exactly what he was feeling and had named it with the precision of someone who'd been paying close attention to the right things.I put my hand on his shoulder. He was tense under it—the tension of a child who'd been carrying something too heavy for several days and was waiting to find out if the adult could take some of the weight."You did right," I said. "Telling me.""Is Mummy okay?" he asked.The quest
Chapter 179RIVERA He was awake.Not upset—not sitting up or distressed or reaching for me. Just lying on his back with his eyes open, looking at the ceiling in the particular way he had when he was thinking about something and had decided that the ceiling was the appropriate surface to think at.I came into the room and sat on the edge of his bed, the way I'd done hundreds of times across five years of nights. The mattress dipped slightly with my weight and he turned his head toward me."Hey," I said quietly."Hey." His voice was awake enough that I wondered how long he'd been lying there."Thought you were asleep.""I was thinking," he said."What about?"He was quiet for a moment. The particular quiet he used when he was choosing how to say something—finding the words that were closest to the thing he actually meant. He was careful about this. Had been since he was very small, had always seemed to understand that the gap between what you meant and what you said mattered."Daddy,"
Chapter 178RIVERAWe came home to a house that smelled like itself.That was the first thing I noticed when I unlocked the front door and pushed it open—the particular smell of our home, which was a combination of Louis's things and Bianca's things and the specific quality of a space that had been lived in by specific people long enough that it held their presence even when they weren't in it. Coffee and the particular soap Bianca used and Louis's inexplicable preference for leaving his shoes directly in the path of anyone entering the house.Louis walked in past me and went immediately to check on the night watch, which he'd left in formation on his windowsill before we'd departed for Silver Moon and had apparently been thinking about at intervals throughout our time away. I heard him on the stairs, his footsteps quick with purpose.I set down the bags.The house was quiet in the way houses were quiet when you returned to them after time away—not empty, but waiting. The specific hus
Chapter 177MATTHEWHe was quiet for a moment, running his finger along the strap of his sleepover bag. "I feel like it's okay to be excited about things again," he said. "Like, before, when something was good, I felt bad about it being good. Because Mama wasn't there for it." He paused, finding the words with the careful effort he always brought to hard things. "But I talked to Dr. Fisher about it and she said that Mama would want me to have good things. That the good things aren't—" He paused again. "She said the good things aren't happening instead of Mama. They're happening alongside missing her."I looked at my son."Does that make sense?" he asked."Yes," I said. "That makes complete sense.""So I let myself be excited." He looked at his bag. "I think Mama would think Biscuit sounds like a good dog.""I think she would too," I said."She liked dogs," he said. "She told me once, when we walked past a big one on the street, that she'd always wanted one but they'd never had one." H
Chapter 32MATTHEW The next two days passed quickly as I was staying more hours in the hospital, in room 306, watching over Mia, making sure that there was no complications or her disease would resurface. Mia was recovering beautifully—better than anyone had dared hope. She was sitting up by the
Chapter 31 MATTHEWI paced outside the operating theatre like a caged wolf, my feet wearing a path in the sterile linoleum while my wolf prowled restlessly beneath my skin. Six hours. It has been six hours since they had been rolled in together and i was still out here waiting for news, my heart
Chapter 28BIANCAI ended the call and set the phone down, suddenly aware that Rivera had been watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read."So that's it," he said. It wasn't a question. "Thirty days from now, you'll be free of him.""Thirty days from now, I'll no longer be Luna of Silver
Chapter 26MATTHEW"You're not leaving. Not until you sign these transfer papers."she said as I turned to see her holding out a document, that she apparently wanted me to sign."I don't have time for this right now, Bianca. Mia's in danger.""Sign them." Her voice was flat, emotionless. "You can ha







