Igor

The silence in the citadel pressed against my skin like a living thing, but I gave nothing back. Outwardly, I was calm—the same cold, collected Beta who had stared down elders and made them scatter. Inwardly, something was eating through my ribs, a slow acid of self-recrimination that I couldn't shake.

The fire. I forgot the fire.

Orion walked beside me, his presence a familiar weight in my peripheral vision. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. Twenty-seven years of sharing a womb, a ...