Too sharp in my throat, too chemical under the smoke. Someone laughed and said something about desert medicine. Someone else joked about snow. The words scattered before I could catch them.
The world tilted.
Not all at once.
At first, everything just got brighter.
The fire breathed.
The stars moved.
The music stretched like taffy, slowing and speeding, slipping in and out of my bones. Faces blurred at the edges. Brielle’s laugh became the scrape of metal. The desert pulsed red beneath my boots.
Tris grabbed my arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
I looked at her, but her face wouldn’t stay still.
Jake appeared beside her. “What did you take?”
“I’m fine.”
My voice sounded far away.
“You’re not fine,” he said.
“I’m Destiny.”
The second I said it, something inside me opened.
Destiny.
My name.
My curse.
My joke.
My inheritance.
My mother had named me like she knew one day I would have to become something people feared. Not loved. Not understood. Feared.
Maybe that was the truth no one wanted to tell me.
Maybe blood did remember.
Maybe Mandy hadn’t died in that crash. Maybe she had curled up somewhere inside me, waiting for the right night, theright fire, the right cruel little girl with a shiny white Bronco and a mouth full of my mother’s sins.
I turned toward the flames.
They leaned toward me.
I swear they did.
Red and gold and hungry, licking at the sky like they knew my name too.
“Des,” Tris said, voice trembling now. “You’re scaring me.”
I smiled at the fire.
