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She was revenant

Within her, so was at work: a swift concrescence of ether like interlacing fingers

She saw her hao’s sentence of evanescence, he had soleaned her soul And because she could not have a life in her oorld, he had given her one here, in secret How had he extracted her al--he had taken it all and put it in the wishbone, and saved it for her

It came to her what Izîl had said the last time she saw him, when he offered her baby teeth and she rejected them "Once," he’d said, and she hadn’t believed him "Once he wanted some"

She believed it now

Revenants were rown, from mature teeth But Briiven her a whole life, far away froiven her a childhood, a world Wishes Art And Issa and Yasri and Twiga, they had known and helped; hidden her Loved her She would see them soon, and she wouldn’t stand back froruffness and his monstrous physical presence She would throw her arms around him and say, finally, thank you

She looked up from her palms--from one wonder to another--and Akiva was before her He still stood at the foot of the bed on which, just a ainst all of her, and Karou understood that the aching allness rose from what she had shared with him in another body, another life She had fallen in love with hi it was alh a prism of tears

"You escaped," she said "You lived"

She uncoiled froainst the remembered solidity of him, the heat

A hesitation, then his arainst hi, his lips pressed to the crown of her head

"You escaped," she repeated, sobbing, but laughing now, too "You’re alive"

"I’m alive," he whispered, choked "You’re alive I never knew All these years, I never thought--"

"We’re alive," Karou said, dazed The wonder of it swelled within her, and she felt like their myth had come to life They had a world; they were in it This place that Briiven her, it was half her hoh a portal in the sky They could have both, couldn’t they?

"I saw you die," Akiva said, helpless "Karou… Madrigal… My love" His eyes, his expression He looked as he had seventeen years ago, on his knees, forced to watch He said again, "I saw you die"

"I know" She kissed hi horror of his scream "I remember it all"

As did he

The hooded executioner: aon fro riot, their roars and bloodlust:a mockery of the dream of peace Akiva had nurtured since Bullfinch Because one a them had touched his soul, he had believed them all worthy of that dream

And there she stood in shackles--the one; his one--her wings in their pinion crione This hat they did to their own His beautiful Madrigal, graceful even now

He watched in helpless horror as she sank to her knees Laid her head on the block Impossible, screamed Akiva’s heart This couldn’t happen The will, the al’s neck, stretched vulnerable, her sh and poised to fall

His screa him from the inside It ripped and tore; there was pain, pain to suic, but he was too weak The Wolf had seen to that: Even now Akiva was flanked by revenant guards, their ha sickness Still he tried, and ripples went through the crowd as the very ground beneath their feet shifted The scaffold rocked, the executioner had to take a step to steady hih

The effort burst the blood vessels in his eyes Still he screalinted its descent, and Akiva fell forward on his hands He was shredded, eone

All that re thing, like a falling al was unsheathed

She are of the falling away of flesh

She still was She was, but she was not corporeal She didn’t want to see her head’s disgraceful tumble, but couldn’t help it Her horns hit the platforodly thud ofit froe point above her body, she saw it all She couldn’t not The eyes had been the body’s apparatus, with their selective focus and lids for closing She had no such ability now She saw everything, with no fleshly boundary to divide herself fro, all directions at once as if her entire being were an eye, but a hazy one The agora, the hateful crowd And on the platfor the air around her: Akiva on his knees, pitched forward and wracked with sobs

Below her she saw her own body, headless It swayed to one side and collapsed It was finished Madrigal felt tethered to it She had expected that; she knew souls stayed with their bodies for several days before beginning to ebb Revenants who had been snatched back froe of evanescence had said it felt like a tide carrying theo had ordered her body left on the platforlean her soul She was sorry for the treatht call bodies "envelopes," she loved the skin that had carried her through her life, and she wished it could have a more respectful end, but it couldn’t be helped, and anyway, she didn’t intend to be here to see it break down She had other plans

She wasn’t certain that it could be done, this idea she clung to She had nothing but a hint to go on, but she wrapped all her will around it, and all her longing and passion Everything that she and Akiva had dreamed about, noarted, she directed into this one last act: She was going to set him free

To which end, she would need a body She had one picked out It was a good one; she’d made it herself

She had even used dia on with you, Mad?"

A week earlier, Madrigal had been with Chiro in the barracks It was dawn, and she had crept into her bunk a ht with Akiva "What do you ht?"

"Working," she said

"All night?"

"Yes, all night Though I may have fallen asleep in the shop for a couple of hours" She yawned She felt safe in her lies because no one outside Brimstone’s inner circle kneent on in the west tower, or even knew about the secret passageway through which she came and went And it was true that she had slept for a little while--just not in the shop She’d dozed curled against Akiva’s chest and woken to hi her