ve left the pe

, needing air, needing to be anywhere Elder Voss's whispered threat couldn't f

ere quiet in a way that didn't feel

nything. Soft. Deliberate. Matching

ked hard aga

o fast, and the foot

xhaustion playing tricks.

y shouldn't have trusted, phone gripped so tight in my

an

me sideways - and I screamed, twisting hard, ready to fi

hadow slammed

brick. I stumbled back against the wall, chest heaving, watching two shapes

the ground. The other stood over him

myself to

la

e stoppe

iliar - worn soft at the edges by years I hadn't h

pping into the thin wash

mewhere between my

here before. But the eyes - warm brown, steady, achingly kind even now, even wit

ia

nearly g

dead. They told me you died, Rian. Six yea

ranger who'd just taken down an attacker with his bare hands, and more like the boy who use

en

ddenly alert, coiled. "We're not safe out here. Whoever sent him-" he nodd

ian, what is

p into his face, the kind that came from years, not days. His hand hovered nea

e broke. "I'm just

it came. "You're still doing that thing," he murmured. "Answe

ng. "You re

everything

beat, six years disappeared. We were fifteen again, sitting on the roof of the old

. Or so I'd believed for

you been?"

vement, then back at me, and something guarded slid back into plac

tly. "From a distance. It was

from

the distance - someone had called the police, or worse,

move," he

u tell me wha

la

t me grieve you for six years. You don't get to show

on mine with a desperation that stole the rest of my sentence right out of my mouth. "I k

hy

slightly, like the truth

m attacker," he said. "He works for Seraphina. A

ind us, in the dark, I heard more foo

rd the sound, then back

k alive," he said. "Which mean