The Rogue Queen's Rise
"Boots, because you never know when you'll need to run somewhere the ground isn't kind. Flashlight, because it's the cheapest way to remind yourself the dark isn't permanent. Knife, because you should never again be in a room where the only weapon is whatever you can turn yourself into, understand?"
I don't fully understand. But I nod anyway, and I mean the nod, because something about the ritual of it — the plainness, the lack of ceremony — undoes something in me that three years of careful smallness never touched.
Last, she unclips a length of braided leather cord from her own wrist and holds it out.
"Scent mask," she says. "Not perfect. Nothing's perfect. But it'll blur you enough that an