I’d been waiting to speak with the head architect for hours. And with the waiting came the despair I’d forced aside, the panic I’d strangled in the face of necessity. It was all creeping back in, like spiders crawling beneath my skin. This was going wrong. So horribly wrong. Nobody had woken from the Somnivae curse in twenty-seven years—the empire had all but lost hope the victims would ever be revived. My uncle…he was as good as gone.
