I just stare.
The earth under my feet goes quiet.
Shockingly, blessedly quiet.
As if the realm itself is holding its breath.
She huffs when I don’t answer fast enough, marching closer, boots crunching over broken pavement. She doesn’t flinch at the fault line.
Doesn’t hesitate when it groans under her weight.
Solid. Steady. Grounded.
“Okay, Big Guy,” she says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Do you speak? Or are you just here to commune with the asphalt?”
My lips twitch.
“I speak,” I say, and my voice comes out lower than I intend.
Rough with more than just disuse.
Her eyes flick up to mine.
Something sparks between us—sharp and bright and undeniable. It shoots down my spine, into the ground, and the cracked earth hums like it recognizes her.
No, not like it recognizes her.
Because it does.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
Alaric’s words echo in my head.
Try New Jersey.
Those bastards.
Of all the improbable places in all the worlds, they were right.
Because as I stand there in the stink of human exhaust and marsh rot, looking at this stubborn, brilliant, utterly unafraid woman glaring up at me like I’m in her way—for the first time since the Prime fell, something in my stone heart moves.
It cracks.
And I think—Oh. There you are.
Chapter 1
Alina
Job Site, New Jersey
The ground shouldn’t move like this.
Not here.
Not in a reclaimed marsh-turned-luxury townhome development in northern New Jersey.
Yet my seismometer disagrees.
