(GRIFFIN)
I should leave Seattle and return to my kingdom, to my people who need me. But I can't bring myself to walk away again.
The city wraps around me like a foreign blanket as I stand outside GenTherapeutics, watching the lights still burning on the top floor where Maya works through another late night. Rain drizzles down, clinging to my hair, my shoulders, my skin. I hardly feel it.
All I feel is the hollow ache where our bond should be, where it still is, diminished but refusing to die completely.
Maya's words echo in my mind: "Your people killed my mother, and you're here to collect on a contract based around her?"
Did they? Did someone from my kingdom murder Helen Sorin? The thought leaves me cold in a way the rain never could.
