Then I think of the dark, and the lights, and the roaring, and Juliet, and before I can think of anything else, I fight the final few steps to the door and step out into the cold, where the rain is still coming down like shards of moonlight, or like steel.

I think of Grace and feel a sharp pain in my chest.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too. The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

I’m sorry,” he repeats again, too low for Raven and Tack to hear. “I’m sorry for everything.

He Is looking at me through the smoke, across the fence. He never takes his eyes off me. His hair Is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent If we had ten thousand billion years.