Chapter 100. The Second Mouth (2)

Aria felt the pull line up with the bones of her chest, saw Luma sway as if a hand had reached for the back of her neck. She tightened her fingers around the child’s palm and lifted, not away, but higher, so the door could see better the shape of choice.

“You do not harmonize with hunger,” Aria told the mouths, shaping the sentence like you shape a horse around the promise of direction. “You harmonize with answer.”

The second door hesitated long enough for Lior to fold the residue of the rite into the shimmer and seal it in a curve that did not close. The girl exhaled the kind of breath that people take when they learn they still belong to themselves.

A cheer began along the left flank as the news traveled faster than sight, but it died halfway into its first syllables when a new pressure laid over the ridge in a single broad hand.

A third pull had found them.

It did not come from the seam where the leader chanted.

It did not come from the hungry