Chapter 16: DustFREEDOM IS ANOTHER world, utterly alien. Overwhelming. I’m caught between the imperative to surrender to its mad intensity and the fierce need to fight it off, to draw stillness around myself in a shield and retreat from the chaos.
Ravel’s arm behind me is an anchor and a weapon, security and danger wrapped up in treacherous warmth. He steers me onward as Freedom’s inhuman inhabitants draw back to make way.
I take it in flashes, unable to cope with the whole. Heavy-lidded eyes droop under lashes that flare, teal-feathered, over orange mesh. Winking hemispheres form an armoured, angular pattern across the scalp. Black lips gleam, reflective with a wet, mirrored sheen. Shining metal glints from incisors.
There’s no safe direction to look. Above, the light scatters in all d
