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NOVAK: Vanya.
Kapoor jerks. She turns toward the boat, toward where Lee and Sophie are helping the fourth passenger from the boat. She stands on the shore, unsteady, her arms still striped with salt tracks.
KENNY: Oh, my God.
NOVAK: It’s good to see you, Vanya.
Novak’s smile is weary but genuine. The blanket drops from her shoulders. Her ragged wings hang, broken, bloodied, from her back. She shuts her eyes and lets out a soft sigh as the light of this world shines across them.
Black spreads like frost over the feathers, the patches of exposed skin and fractured bone. They flake away, soot scattered in the wind, leaving only skin behind.
Sophie laces her fingers through her mother’s.
KAPOOR: And which one are you, then?
The girl looks at her steadily, and does not answer.
The mist fades. The waters are still. The birds are gone.
36
TWILIGHT FELL, ANDI stood on the porch of Mrs. Popova’s house, watching the moon play over the rippling water at the shore’s edge. For the first time, there were words in my mind to wrap around what I saw, what I felt. But there was no one to speak them to.
My mother was asleep inside. We’d found her, bloody and nearly unconscious, as we raced from the cathedral. We’d tried, briefly, to help the people inside. But with the Seraph gone—dead, or shut away, we didn’t know which—they were undone. Their flesh gave under our fingers, scattered to ash like my mother’s wings.
The strange children raced beside us. They raced into the sunlight outside, where the earth was littered with a thousand, a hundred thousand dead, malformed birds. The children leapt into the air, laughter turning to the cawing of crows.
We’d run, and there she was. My mother, or maybe both of them, the way I was Sophie and Sophia both. Her echo had merged with the Six-Wing to protect us all those years, and when she needed to, she tore herself free. She poured herself into the living woman and gave her strength enough to come, to help.
We gathered her up. Liam and Abby had to carry her, hurt as they were—I couldn’t, for I felt at once as substantial as tissue paper and also as if I carried an unbearable weight on my shoulders.
Sophia.
She was there and she wasn’t, as we ran.
I shut my eyes against the memory of running. The climb up the steps. We’d made it out. We’d stepped from the bunker into the light of a true sun, filtering down through the mist. Like stepping through an open door. Easy.
Easy, because the echo worlds were dying. Collapsing into each other. Falling into silence.
“Sophie?”
I opened my eyes. Liam stood on the beach, hands in his pockets. He’d cleaned up. Gotten his injuries bandaged. Called his mum. Twelve hours on and we were already getting good at pretending that normal was a possibility, after all of this.
“Hey,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You’ve got a lot on your mind,” he said.
I smiled a little, a pleasant-painful feeling hooking me just under my heart. “Is everything okay at your place?”
“Yeah. Dr.—Mum fell asleep,” he said. “I guess she’s been awake for most of six weeks. Which is how long we’ve been gone, by the way. In case no one thought to tell you before you, say, called home and got an earful from a concerned parent.”
I laughed. “I’m sure you charmed your way out of it.”
He looked at me, head tilted a little to the side. “You sound different.”
“I know.”
“How much of her is...”
