“Rui? What’s wrong?”
She heard the panic and worry in Zizi’s voice.
“I... I don’t feel—” She couldn’t complete her sentence.
She was drowning. She was ice but on fire. The room spun. Her vision blurred and came into focus and blurred again. Darkness fell.
She was alone.
Lost.
She heard Zizi’s voice from a distance. Muffled and echoey. He was swearing, asking her questions she didn’t understand.
“Rui.”
Surfacing, she blinked hard. Moonlight flashed. The world zoomed back into focus.
Zizi’s face was white. “Dammit, Rui! Breathe.”
She sucked in. Choked on air.
He squeezed her shoulders, the pressure grounding her. “Listen to my voice; stay with me.”
He counted, slow and steady. Rui forced herself to listen to his voice, to breathe. When her chest finally loosened, she followed his gaze down to her hands and understood why he had that look on his face.
Blue flames danced across her fingers, glowing in the dim room, like prayer candles for the dead.
44
Yiran
Yiran lay on his dormitory bed, half wishing he were back home on his own larger, more comfortable one with its soft sheets and down duvet. He’d memorized everything in the brief for tomorrow’s mission. He was to be part of a team inspecting a neighborhood that had previous Revenant activity, escorting a technician who was doing maintenance work. It seemed fairly straightforward, almost too straightforward. The Guild wasn’t about to send cadets out on anything too dangerous—or exciting—for their first mission, he supposed.
An hour passed, feeling like it’d dragged on for days. His eyes were still open. Insomnia had crept in. The more anxious he was about sleeping, the more awake he felt. Finally, he threw off the covers, put on his glasses, and started doing pull-ups on the bar he’d installed in the bathroom doorway to tire himself out.
At the thirteenth pull-up, something hit the window.
Yiran paused, hanging on the bars, listening.
Clink.There it was again.
He went to the window. There was no one on the grounds outside. Weird.
Something creaked. A pair of legs dropped down in front of him.
Yiran cursed in fright.
An upside-down face appeared next.
Yuki.
Yiran’s room was on the highest floor of the dormitory. The Hybrid had to be hanging from the rooftop deck right above.
Yiran slid the window open. “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered. Why was he whispering? He should be sounding the alarm.
Yuki smiled and disappeared.
Dammit.Yiran put on a pair of jeans, pulled a hoodie over his head, and stepped out on the narrow window ledge. The chilly air gave him goose bumps. Praying the ledge wouldn’t break under his weight, he felt for a secure spot to haul himself up.
