Chapter 4 CHAPTER FOUR: THE FEATHER

The feather burned in Lily’s palm like a coal that refused to turn her skin to ash. She had carried it out of the veil room and through the white hallways, past sleeping scientists and blinking security cameras, and now she stood in her small apartment with the door locked and the lights off and the weight of something impossible pressing against her ribs. The feather was not just warm anymore. It was hot, hot enough to make the air around it shimmer, hot enough to cast shadows that moved in the wrong direction, hot enough to make the black substance on her finger pulse in a rhythm that was almost words. She set it on the metal desk in