ela

ice breaking into an unhinged shr

ds surge

ri by the collar of her ruined white gown, hauled her

from my braided updo and slammed the needle-sharp tip

ain your precious future Luna

stiff as a board. "Dad! Mom! He

t guard's rifle barrel and shoving it toward the flo

I commanded, dragging Cori backward st

ling his guards to part. He loved her. He loved the illusion of perfec

m, my fingers tight against the st

ela.

dy, and cut through the

blocking the elevator cor

ack's Gamma. The hea

sixteen and freezing in the attic, he had brought me a wool blanket. When I was twenty-one and starving, he had left fresh br

ltering for the briefest f

ompletely devoid of the warmth I remembered from my yout

ing with brilliant, strategic desperation. "She

kn

o's chest. I watched the microscopic shift

aw a standar

er and drew a custom-machined, ma

h the burning, corrosiv

ot, my foolish heart whispered. Not with Cori

str

ision, she drove her elbow st

slip by half an inch. In that exact milli

A

n the world except t

d in the cente

through my sternum, chewing through bone, mus

lv

oison of o

ng, but my lungs filled only with hot, frothing crimson. Wisps of acrid, b

epped forward, his boots stoppi

ng the blood from her lip. She didn't

lt right beside my d

, her breath smelling of strawberries and rot. "You were never Greg's daughter. My mother picked

smoking hole in my chest with