Sloan’s words sang through her mind.

You will always be our little Katherine.

Kate held down the delete key and watched the photos vanish, one by one by one.

Not anymore.

August wanted to crawl out of his skin.

They walked back to the compound in silence . . . well, he walked back to the compound in silence. Leo was preaching. That’s how August thought of it, when his brother gave one of his sermons about the natural order of the world. As if there was anything natural about them. About what they’d just done. He could feel the man’s blood drying on his fingers. Could feel the man’s soul swimming in his head.

“Your problem, August, is that you resist the current. You fight against the tide instead of letting it carry you. . . .” Leo’s black eyes were rimmed with light and bright with zeal. But at least when he got like this, he wasn’t forcing August to answer questions about his hunger, his thoughts, his need to feel human. “Just as you fight against your inner fire. You could burn so brightly, little brother.”

August shivered, cold to his bones. “I don’t . . . want to . . . ,” he said, teeth chattering. This was the opposite of hunger. This was worse.

“Stop being selfish,” said Leo. “We were not made for want. It has no place in us.”

It has no place in you, August wanted to say, because you burned it out.

They reached the compound, passed the guards, and stepped into the elevator. He clenched his teeth as it rose, afraid that if he opened his mouth, something would escape. Maybe a sob, or a scream. The man’s life was buzzing inside of him like bees.

What have you done to me?

What have you made me do?

The moment the elevator doors opened, he stormed out, carving a line toward his room.

“Where have you two been?” asked Henry.

“Is that blood?” added Emily.

August didn’t stop.

“Leo?”

“I was giving him a lesson.”

“What—”

“Don’t worry, Henry. He’ll be fine. . . .”

August closed the door, and slumped back against the wood. There was no lock, so he stayed there until he was sure no one would follow, then let out a shuddering breath and tore off the FTF jacket. He left the lights off and collapsed onto the bed. His fingers dug into his ribs, trying to stop the buzzing, but it didn’t work, and as soon as he closed his eyes, the buzzing rose to screams. He fumbled in the crumpled sheets until he found the music player and shoved the buds into his ears.

Something landed on the bed, and he rolled over to see Allegro padding toward him, but the cat paused just out of reach, bright eyes narrowing with suspicion, and when he went to pet him, the cat recoiled and darted away.

They can tell the difference, you know, between good and bad.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the dark. “I had no choice.”

The words left a sick taste in his mouth. How many times had someone said those things to him? It never made a difference. A confession didn’t undo the crime, nothing could, so August folded in on himself and turned the music up until it drowned out everything.

It was the middle of the night, but he couldn’t sleep.

The buzzing had finally stopped, but his nerves were frayed, and he padded out into the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of water. He wasn’t thirsty, but something about the gesture calmed him, made him feel normal.

His attention wandered over a stack of folders on the counter, and he was about to reach for them when he heard something scratching in the dark. August set the glass aside untouched, and found Allegro pacing back and forth in front of Ilsa’s door.

He knocked, but the door wasn’t pulled all the way shut, and it fell open under his touch. Inside, the lights were off, and the first thing he saw were the stars. Every surface of Ilsa’s room was covered in them, tiny dots of fiber-optic light splashed across the ceiling and walls and floors. His sister stood in front of the window, her strawberry hair loose but strangely weightless, twining through the air around her face. Her fingers were splayed across the window glass, and in her sleeveless shirt, her own tiny black stars trailed across her shoulders and down her arms.

Two thousand one hundred and sixty-three.

August couldn’t reconcile the Ilsa in front of him, gentle and kind, with the monster whose true voice somehow leveled a piece of the world and everyone in it.

Our sister, the Angel of Death.

He wanted to ask her about that day. Wanted to know what happened, what it felt like, to live with so much death. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t.

Allegro padded toward the bed, and August was about to retreat when his sister spoke, so softly he almost didn’t hear.

“It’s falling apart,” she whispered. Her fingers twitched on the glass. August padded forward carefully, quietly. “Crumbling,” continued Ilsa. “Not ashes to ashes and dust to dust, like things should go, but wrong, like when a crack starts deep inside a stone and then spreads and spreads and spreads, and you don’t know until the day it . . .” She pressed against the window, and hairline fractures began to web out across the glass.

August brought his hand to rest over his sister’s.

“I can feel the cracks. But I can’t tell . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them wide. “I can’t tell if the cracks are out there or inside of me or both. Is it selfish, to hope they’re out there, August?”