10
Sienna opened her eyes.
It was dark, but the air smelled different. Whereas the inside of the library had a sense of dust from the pages of old books, the air here smelled of smoke and ash. Sienna looked around.
They stood on a street, hemmed in on all sides by shelled-out buildings, towering close and dog-legging away so she couldn't see very far. It was a warren of narrow streets, not even big enough for a car to drive down, an urban labyrinth. Empty rooms looked down on them like vacant eyes, the stone crumbling, a place where nature had started to reclaim the emptiness.
"It's Old Aleppo," Mila said. "The part of the city pushed over the border."
Sienna felt the shadow as a visceral sense on this side. It was like a darkness pushed down inside her all her life, which had suddenl
