BY QUARTER to twelve midnight, the city no longer pretended to be normal.
Sirens threaded through laughter. Music bled out of bars and open car windows. Streets clogged with bodies moving nowhere fast, everyone drunk on anticipation, on the lie that a countdown could reset anything that mattered.
Lily watched it through the narrow window high on the concrete wall. The glass vibrated faintly with sound. Bass. Fireworks testing again, sharper now, closer. Each c***k set her nerves humming.
Chaos made people careless.
Cassian loved chaos.
Jeremiah stood behind her, close enough that she could feel his presence without touching. Just there, a constant point of awareness in a building that felt increasingly like the eye of a storm.
“By midnight,” he said, voice low, “the city will give us
