When he opened his eyes again, they were on the third-floor landing of the safehouse, and Lian was staring at him with an expression that hovered between terror and wonder.
Kael shifted, and the old floorboard groaned. Lian’s eyes snapped open—clear, dark, and utterly alert. She didn’t sit up, but her body tensed like a wire.
Across the small, dust-choked room, Lian was curled on a heap of old canvas sacks. Her breathing was slow, even—the practiced stillness of a fellow survivor, not true rest. But even in the dim light filtering through the grime-streaked window, Kael could see the faint shimmer clinging to her skin. It was a soft, silver-white glow, like moonlight caught in a spider’s web, and it pulsed gently in time with her heart.
“Are you?”