There was Yoan, Nathaniel’s partner, holding her son Hazel.

The woman in front of me didn’t resemble anything like the self-assured person in my memory. Her hair was matted into filthy knots, her clothes torn to shreds at the seams. A patch of dirt and rust-brown blood stained her face, her eyes hollow as if she’d endured a storm of blades.

Something primal turned in my chest — not pity, exactly, but the faint reverberation of a self I’d buried long, long ago.

I knelt next to her, speaking quietly but firmly. “Yoan, what’s happened?”

She flinched at the sound of my voice, but the recognition eased her panic. And...