Valkyrie was at a table with Rosé and Indigo, heads bent over something—maps, probably, or rotation lists. Her posture was sharp and tired at the same time. Like she’d been holding this place up on her shoulders for a long time and only just got someone else’s handsunder the weight.
I slid the phone away.
Hours wore on. The sky outside went from washed-out gray to darker steel. Fence lights clicked on one by one, bathing the perimeter in yellowed halos.
Liberty eventually sent most of the girls to their routines. Some stayed on watch. Some claimed bunks. Some disappeared into corners with bottles and bunnies.
By the time I made it back to Valkyrie’s room, my body was more tired than my brain.
The door was open, like before. Same dark walls. Same posters. Same knives in a row.
The big difference was the absence.
No backpack leaning against the air mattress. No strap digging into my fingers.
It should’ve felt like freedom.
It didn’t.
Valkyrie came in behind me, flicked the light on low, then kicked the door shut with her boot.
“You look like shit,” she said conversationally.
“You say the sweetest things,” I replied.
She dropped onto the edge of her bed instead of taking the chair this time. The toes of her boots touched the floor. Fingers laced loosely in her lap. The key Liberty had given her dangled around her neck, a small, bright lie in all that ink and black fabric.
I sat on the edge of the air mattress and kicked my boots off. The plastic creaked under me.
For a minute we just breathed, the hum of thebuilding loud in the quiet.
“Blackjack wants me to get him some pages,” I said eventually. “Photos. Stuff he can send to Roman so he can start sniffing his own walls more.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. “He can’t let him have the whole thing,” she said.
“Not a chance,” I agreed. “Just enough to prove we’re not bullshitting him. I told him I’d do it when Liberty’s cool. So, that means when you’re cool.”
She snorted. “I’m never cool,” she said. “I run hot or not at all.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said.
Her gaze flicked to the key on her chest, then back to me. “When it’s time,” she said, “we go down together. My key, your eyes. No one else.”
“Works for me,” I said.
She shifted, turning a little so she was more facing me than the door.
“So,” she said. “You said Miami gave you your road name?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”
“How’d you two meet?” she asked.
I leaned back on my hands, staring at the ceiling for a second. Old water stains made shapes up there. Faces if you looked too long.
“Juvenile detention,” I said. “Classy, I know.”
Her lips quirked. “Go on.”
