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And the beasts would blink sleepily in wonder—eyes stinging, frozen-over snouts puffing out clouds of steaming air—and roar.

It was a celebration, those roars, and a declaration:

We are awake, too.

The cub, shivering in the dark, was very old, and yet too young to remember those times.

His mothers had explained it to him, though, long ago.

On his darkest days, he recited their stories to remind himself that while he was now alone, he had not always been.

If he had once had a name, he could no longer remember it.

He knew he was a cub. His mothers had called him that, before the end.

“Cub,” he said to himself every few hours, or every few days, or after months had passed and he had tired of silence. His old voice tore like brittle paper. Sometimes the sound terrified him because he had forgotten his voice existed.

“Sleep wildly, my little cub, and dream of the stars.” That’s what his mothers had often told him.

But he never slept, not anymore.

He crawled.

And he craved.

.6.

The Painted Lie

The next morning, Thorn woke up groggy-eyed from a night of worried sleep. She stumbled into the kitchen and was cooking Brier’s favorite breakfast—eggs scrambled with onions and diced tomatoes from their garden, served with thick buttered toast—when someone pounded on their front door three times.

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

Thorn jumped. The spatula flew out of her hands.

Mazby, foraging for beetles in the flower box outside thekitchen window, thrust his head through the curtain. One twitching black leg hung askew from his beak.

“Manners, Mazby.” Thorn dumped the eggs onto a plate.

Mazby swallowed. “Who do you think that could be?”

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

No one ever came all the way out to Flower House for a visit, not since their parents had gone down to the Break for their war rotation, and not since their friend Bartos had grown up and been recruited. Brier saw her friends while out in town or up on the mountain. And Thorn’s only friends were Bartos and Brier.

Thorn undid the latches with shaking fingers. She couldn’t help thinking that if Brier were the one answering the door, her knees wouldn’t be so wobbly.

Be Brier,she told herself.Be Brier. Be Brier.

She opened the door and tried to smile the way Brier would.