Chapter 56. Runners

Jenna’s POV

The world outside Calista’s cave felt wrong after days under stone. The light was too honest. The air smelled like dry pine instead of salt. I shoved my hands in the pockets of the plain courier jacket Calista had lying around for this purpose alone, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask where she’d gotten from, and pressed the little shell to my throat.

“Sing the shape,” she’d said. I didn’t sing. But I knew mimicry. I closed my eyes and thought of the Council runner I’d watched a dozen times back in Winter Mountain; small, mousy, shoulders turned inward, a way of moving that screamed don’t look at me, look at the wax. The shell warmed, cool feathers ran over my skin, and my reflection in a car window blurred and settled into someone nobody could describe five minutes later.

At the Council compound the banners snapped like they had opinions. Guards scanned faces, hands, seals. I held out my tube like a prayer and didn’t let my gaze climb higher tha