Mika didn't sleep that night.
She told herself it was because of the creature — because somewhere out there, more of those things might be crawling out of the tree line, and someone needed to keep watch. She told herself it had nothing to do with the way Diego had looked at her in the ash, like six months and a rejection and everything else between them had simply stopped mattering the moment her blood hit the ground.
She was lying to herself. She was good at that, lately.
By the time the sun came up over the Blackmoon border, she'd already changed the bandage on her forearm twice, not because the wound needed it — it had healed hours ago, silver light knitting the skin back together before dawn — but because her hands needed something to do that wasn't reaching for her phone to call Ya
