The echoes of the howl clung to Aria’s skin long after the fire sank into a bed of embers. Heat breathed from the cracked tiles of the abandoned station, painting the underworld in copper light. She stood with her hands open at her sides as the hybrids drifted away in twos and threes, reluctant to leave—as if stepping back into the city would dissolve the thin, fierce magic they had made together. Some pressed their palms to hers before they went. Others didn’t touch, only met her eyes with a look she recognized from battlefields and funerals: belief tempered by grief.
Kellen waited until the last of them disappeared into the tunnels. He kicked a loose bolt into the pit, watched a coal flare and go dark, then looked over, rain-sheen on his hair from the leaks in the vaulted ceiling. “You
