Daughter of Smoke and Bone

46 SUDDEN

Karou gasped. Her hands flew to her neck and wrapped around it, and it was intact.

She looked at Akiva and blinked, and when she breathed his name, there was a new richness in her voice, an infusion of wonder and love and entreaty that made it seem to rise out of time. As it did. “Akiva,” she breathed with the fullness of her self.

With longing, with anguish, he watched her, and waited.

She dropped her hands from her neck and they trembled as she stripped off her gloves to reveal her palms. She stared at them.

They stared back.

They stared back — two flat indigo eyes — and she understood what Brimstone had done.

She finally understood everything.