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It’s all hollow and automatic, but I can’t think of anything else to say. It all just tumbles out of me, these simple and easy lies to soothe my brother’s passing.

Very soon, I will be alone in this world. My father’s mind is gone. My mother barely speaks to me. My brother will be dead.

“Never let. . .” he starts to say that old mantra but gives up halfway through. He shakes his head and tries again with a new word.

“Hunter,” he says. He commands. It is his final word.

Hunter. Hunter. Choose Hunter.

He dies staring at me with glassy eyes, staring without his soul. His body is empty. I crouch beside him, sniff, and close my eyes.

I try to keep it together. I knew this was coming. But if I knew it, if I had time to prepare, why does it feel so raw?

I want to be a child again. I wish we had never come to London. I wish my father had never met my mother. I wish I was dead.

I stop myself from spiralling further by sinking my fingers into the snow. When I feel the tears press forward, I give myself the luxury of screaming—but only in my imagination. I envision myself bending over in the snow, ripping at my skin, the glorious pain of stinging scratches grounding this body to the world. I imagine beating the trees and howling, howling like a teras on a hunt. I revel in the imagined ecstasy and it’s still not enough.

“I’m sorry.”

I don’t turn around, but I swallow my tears and stare dead ahead at the tree above Thaddeus’ head. “Are you?”

“One less hunter means more teras.”

I grit my teeth so hard my jaw asks. “Aren’t you just brimming with empathy?” I whisper. I slide my hand into my pockets and get a cigarette, which I light before I stand.

“That was,” he pauses, “cruel of me. I’m Leo Shaw,” the blonde man says as I turn. “And—I really am sorry.”

“Cassius Jones,” I say after a puff. “This was my brother, Thaddeus. Hunter class. Graduated two years ago.”

It all starts coming out. I regret speaking; I tell myself to stop oversharing, and yet I can’t seem to do it. “Are you heading to London?”

Leo Shaw stares at me. “I do believe I asked you first.”

He speaks in a strange cadence, like a tightly wound spring. I expect the same kind of sharp anger Thaddeus has—had. But even when I don’t speak for several moments, Leo simply waits.

“I live there,” I tell him, and gesture back to my brother, “thanks to this corpse.”

I don’t know why I’m being cruel to myself, or to Thaddeus, especially when he can’t fight back. Leo does not question me. I turn fully to inspect him, eyes taking in the pale armour of his muscular body. “But now I may not live there for long.”

Leo’s brow twitches. I see he doesn’t understand—hasn’t heard about the changes. When he doesn’t press me, I decide to drop it.

“I really am sorry about your brother,” he says. I’m not sure why I don’t quite believe him. There’s something about Leo Shaw—about the other xenos, too—and I don’t know if it’s because there’s already such a clear divide in the sand between myself and them, or if they’re all wound tight and serious by virtue of a hard existence, but I am fairly certain everything I’m seeing right now is a mask.

Leo Shaw asks, “What do you know about the admission trials?”

I tell the truth, “Not a damn thing.”

He squints at me, pursing his lips. I’m not believed.

“Help me carry him and I’ll give you a cigarette,” I say.

Leo walks forward and wordlessly steals my lit cigarette from my hands. His rough fingers brush against mine and he takes a long drag without looking away. I’m pulled to the endless blue of his eyes and immediately flush. Then he coughs and splutters, choking out, “Disgusting.”

“New to it?”

He doesn’t reply. His downcast gaze watches me, and then he replaces the cigarette, gently tucking its end into my mouth.

“Help me in the trials, and the lot of us will escort you back to London,” he says easily. “How about that?”