The courtyard fell into a stunned, breathless silence.
Lyra hung limp in my arms, her ash-flesh skin split open in glowing cracks that leaked slow, black ichor. She wasn’t dead. She was worse — awake, aware, and carrying pieces of me inside her like shards of broken glass. Her gray eyes flickered open and locked onto mine with something that wasn’t quite hatred anymore. It was recognition. The same hunger. The same rot.
“You… made me hungry,” she whispered, voice wet and rattling. A thin line of gray fluid ran from the corner of her mouth. “Finn’s face is in here now. He’s screaming. He wants me to finish what you started.”
The pre-heat answered with a cruel twist in my gut. My empty belly — the place where my child had died — clenched hard, sending a wave of shameful heat rolling down
