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.

The problem, as far as Gyre could see it—aside from this being a suicide mission to begin with—was that half of any success was luck.

“You had a better sense of what you could do than I did.” “No, I didn’t. I was being stubborn. Being right was an accident.”

“You’re a monster,” Gyre agreed. Em’s flinch brought her no joy, no vindication. “But a human monster. People are selfish. You are. I am. Humans are selfish. It’s what we do.

She was smiling faintly. She looked—thrilled. Alive. Beaten down, but beginning to glow beneath the bruises.