The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

She’d heard somewhere that pride came before the fall. But she wasn’t going to fall. She was going to climb.

I just took advantage of how this world drives people to do horrible things just to survive. I just—played the game, from the winner’s chair.

They had broken each other open down in the dark, and now that their wreckage was splayed out in the light, Gyre recognized every inch of Em, and Em knew every inch of her.