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“Beloved children! We will gnaw your wing bones—”

“We will slurp the flesh—”

“Frorel—”

“You had no—”

“Right!”

Jin stepped sloay fro on the stone courtyard But their slavering only increased, and a few—of shapes too strange to guess at—closed the circle behind hireat black eyes pleading

“Coo now If you run, they will not notice you”

“But his body! I cannot let them have his body—all this was for your oretched woain to my brother?”

“This is not a possession,” he rimly “It is a mob They will not take his body; they will tear it into pieces For the at the knee This is revenge, and when they are done, there will be nothing left but a few drops of blood for tooers to wipe off their shoes I’ht happen, but I had to helpyou can do, even with all your strength If you killed all of these, with their last breaths they would screas—and they would come, from the deepest cracks and alleys of the city There is no limit to their numbers If you want to live to birth your chicks”—he blushed slightly and looked away, consumed, I sur fe his people—“the sky is the only safe place Go, find so away While the scent of et you When it has passed, they will calive you the mercy of vivisection They will take your body and your babes will be born gray and dead, their first cries hter”

I stared at the hateful littlehorrors I wanted to kill hied Jin to do to that creature It would have felt wonderful, I iined, and his blood would be hot

But Giota would be ashaet my name, and my children would never know her She had known that Jin was near death—it , it must be more important than a mere balanc

ing of scales after a murder

I leaned into his face, and he did not blink Quick as a tailor tearing her stitches, I snapped my head to one side and tore his left ear froround His blood, hot as I had ih the red s—once, twice, three tiht

I circled overhead, high enough to be safe from the pack of scarified Yi, who quivered with excitement and lust There was no chance for ht with his eyes, to know that I was safe before he died, a mercy that stories like ours always allow It was not allowed to us

I watched as they lunged forward and sank two dozen sets of diamond teeth into lass, and kept screaht his perfect blue throat in its jaws, and he died with a wet, strangling whimper