"Z?"
"There's…nothing. It's like someone hit mute on the entire area."
"This isn't the right place," Nick mutters.
"It has to be," Zara fires back.
I slip through the broken gate and he follows close behind.
"Two-minute intervals," he says. "If I say fall back, you fall back."
I give him a look over my shoulder.
He groans, hating me a little more today. "Fine. If I say fall back, you ignore me completely and do whatever suicidal thing you had planned anyway."
"Better."
The estate appears in pieces. A crumbling wall first. Then the main house.
A recent fire ate it from the inside out. Windows blown. Roofcaved. The air still smells faintly of smoke and something else underneath.
Burned skin.
One foot in front of the other.
Don't even think about it.
"Jesus," Nick whispers.
We step through what used to be the front door. The frame is gone, edges melted and cracked. The floor inside is gray dust.
Zara is quiet. I can hear her typing, likely dragging satellites over coordinates that no longer matter.
The main hall might once have been beautiful. A grand staircase curves up and stops halfway where the rest has collapsed. A chandelier lies twisted on the floor, crystals melted into ugly lumps.
And in the center of the room, there are shapes.
At first they look like broken columns. Then my brain catches up.
"Talk to me. What's there?" Zara asks.
Nick swallows. "Statues, I think."
"They're not statues."
Mother and child.
Up close, they look like they were poured rather than carved. Stone and ash and bone cooked together and left to cool. Something you'd see if hell decided to put together a gallery.
"Fucking hell," Nick breathes.
It's not them. The hair is wrong, the height isn't the same, and the child appears to be smaller than five.
"Tell me it's not her," Zara pleads.
"It's not her." My voice sounds far away. "I'd know her, even like this."
Nick doesn't say anything. He's watching me closely, waiting to see how I'll react, but everything inside me is still—like my rage stepped outside to make room for this.
