His left arm was wrapped around something.
A bundle.
A baby.
My chest did a thing I had no name for. Not surprise. Recognition.
Which made no sense. I'd never seen this hall. I'd never been in a war. I'd never watched a man hold a child in a burning building.
But my body didn't care about what I'd never done. Something older than memory was slamming up under my ribs like a fist on the inside of a door, and it knew this scene the way a hand knows a lock it's opened before.
I tried to hold the image. The baby's face. The arms around it. The shape of the blanket.
The fire didn't care what I needed.
In the burning hall, Noah turned. He shoved the bundle into the arms of a soldier at his shoulder.
His mouth shaped one word.
Go.
The man ran, the child against his chest, and vanished o
