They came out of the ruins into full morning.

The light was flat and cold, the kind that showed everything without warmth, and Marina stood in it for a moment and let her eyes adjust. Around her, the rubble of Silvermoon stretched in every direction. Her birth pack. The place she had been trained to be useful before she understood that useful and valued were different things.

She did not feel grief standing in it.

She felt finished with it, which was different.

Silvain came up beside her. Cian on her other side. Vael behind them with Obsidian, the two of them in the specific proximity of people who had...