An elf enters a street-race tournament to escape a corrupt city trapped in endless night.
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|| Voltyss is one of the last-standing cities caught in the Evernight, an endless night that spread across the land when the moon and stars fell from the...
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Gidget cuts my hair the next day.
After sleeping without dreams for a night, I wake up fully rested and with a nearly healed body. Only a dull ache remains in my bones, thanks to the Fuse, but another injury to the same spot will not be as easy to fix. Everything that happens to me is just a reminder that I'm not invincible, yet it seems I have to be damn near close with everything that keeps happening to me.
I change into an outfit given to me by Gidget that strangely mirrors my style—a black strapped top and black pants with leather knees, and I barely have time to scarf down the eggs and honey-toast Gidget made me before she drags me away to the small bathroom with Zero close behind us. I've taken notice that where she goes, he goes, even if the bathroom isn't quite big enough for all three of us.
Gidget quickly grabs a stool from the other room and pushes me onto it, facing a mirror with one long crack stretching diagonally across the surface. The crack cuts right through my face and luckily the stool is short enough that I can't examine how fried and botched my hair is. The uneven edges scraping at my shoulders are enough to let me imagine its short length.
But even though I refuse to look at it, my heart still dances when the cool silver of Gidget's scissors touch the middle of my neck. The snip of her cut is like an explosion in my ears, but I don't watch the hair fall.
In the reflection of the mirror I glance at Zero, whose eyes are barely visible over the high metal countertop. "So what's the story with you two?" I ask.
"Who? Me and Zero?"
"Yeah," I answer. "You seem to know everything about me, but what about you? How did you two meet?"
Gidget stops cutting for a minute and glances at Zero. "I found him three years ago," she begins after a sigh. "He was howling in the streets, alone, and I took him in. I knew what would happen if the Court found him. They'd lock him away as one of their treasures to preserve for the return of the Dawn."
It's what they will do to me eventually.
"I was only sixteen then," Gidget continues. "I knew my place in my district, but my parents..." She trails off as if trying to find the best way to phrase her words. "My parents were in too deep with the elites and the techies, and this was an opportunity to climb farther up their slippery slope for more favors from the Court. They tried to sell him off, so I ran away with him."
"Wait," I say, nudging away her hand. I turn to look her straight in the eyes. "You have a family and a home in the Ivory District, the safest place in Voltyss, and you just walked away from it? Do you know what people would give up to be in your shoes? What I would've given up for a life like that?"
Gidget watches me closely as if calculating my response in that tech-savvy head of hers. "You don't get it," she says. She glances down at Zero and I swear he gives her a nod to continue. "Zero isn't just a wolf, Alyndra. He's a Lunarborn."
