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“Luna. Look at me.”

“Help me dig!”

She fights my grip, and she is so much stronger than she was yesterday that it almost startles me.

I stop holding her wrists. I put my hands on her shoulders instead, and I stop using my voice.

Kitten.

The shadows around us go still. There is glass in her hair, and small cuts all over her skin. Her glasses are missing.

Beneath my feet, shards crunch as I move.

Luna, let me handle this.

She blinks at me for a moment, then the black drains out of her eyes and what’s left is Luna, grey-faced and hollowed out, staring up at me as if she’s just woken somewhere unfamiliar.

“Lucien.” Her legs give way. I scoop her up into my arms. She’s trembling now. “I can’t move it. He’s under there and I can’t get to him.”

We’ll discuss what she did later. First, we need to get out of here. All three of us. “It’s all right.” I press my mouth to her forehead. “I’ll get him out.”

I set her down on a large piece of rubble, where I can see her and she can see me, then turn to the collapsed part of the building. Mostly glass and metal, but some bricks and beams from the rooms adjoining the conservatory.

There – faint and buried – a heartbeat. Kim’s heartbeat.

I go through the rubble as if it’s sand I’m moving. Behind the trees the sky is turning the pearlescent colour that comes a handful of minutes before the sun. But I keep digging.

Finally…

Kim’s pinned at the legs beneath a fallen metal pipe, bleeding from more places than I can count, one arm bent wrong, his glasses miraculously still on his face but cracked and misshapen.

I try not to think about how good his blood smells.

“Luna,” he croaks, eyes fluttering open. “Is she⁠—”

“Sitting ten feet away, listening to you waste your breath. Hold still.” I bite into my wrist and tell Kim to drink. He resists at first, then gives in and seals his lips around the wound.

I let him drink enough to give him some strength, then brace under the beam, lifting it so Kim can crawl free.

As I drop it back down, the sun inches up over the horizon.

I am out in the open with nowhere to hide.

Luna looks up, noticing the change in light. Kim does too, but he wobbles unsteadily on his feet and I catch him just before he passes out.

As I toss him over one shoulder, and Luna over the other, the sunlight finds my face. My skin sizzles, and the smell of my own burning joins the dust and the blood.

Every instinct screams at me to seal myself in darkness and wait out the day. But we are not safe here.

“Lucien, I can walk,” Luna insists.

I don’t listen. I carry them both into the part of the house that is still standing, then down into the basement tunnel that connects my house to the museum.

In the darkness of the tunnel, I allow myself a moment to catch my breath. But I don’t stop.

I will not stop until they’re safe.

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