I hover over my broken body, watching with cold detachment as Layla cries over me, as she begs the darkness for another chance, for a life. In her moment of despair, my sister doesn’t care who listens, who answers her prayer. She spills her blood and makes a pact, seals it with an incantation from the Book of Ka’schor that she finds in the house. When I return, made whole again, all but my injured ankle and a bracelet of half-moon scars around my wrist, my rebirth comes with strings attached. Vermillion is a part of me. But she wants more—all of me. She wants to live again, to feel again. To
...more
