Chapter 37 · You Don’t Remember Me

The first thing Xia Lan remembered was the taste of iron.

It coated her tongue. It burned the back of her throat. When she tried to swallow, something warm slipped from the corner of her mouth and disappeared into the ash packed across the floor.

Above her, the Ashfall Core pulsed like a dying star.

White light crawled through the chamber in thin, trembling veins. The broken control rings hung in the air around her, their fragments slowly rotating, each piece reflecting a different version of her face—silver eyes, blood-smeared cheeks, black feathers torn from one wing.

And Nolan Vey was holding a blade against her throat.

Not tightly. Not yet.

His arm shook from blood loss. A dark stain spread beneath the bandage wrapped around his ribs, and every breath scraped through his teeth. But his eyes were clear, cold, and utterly unfamiliar.

“Tell me your designation,” he said.

Xia Lan stared at him.

The question should have been absurd. It should have made her angry. Instead, it slid into the empty spaces inside her skull and found nothing waiting there.

“Xia Lan.”

His blade rose a fraction.

“That is a name. I asked for your designation.