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The voices began to fade and grow dimmer. Her stomach lurched as she tumbled senselessly through the cold shadow, deep inside the chasm of the dark Announcer. It must have had to do with the curse, the one that kept Luce reincarnated lifetime after lifetime. And yet, they wanted something from her-badly enough to battle Daniel for it. What had that meant? Until a couple of weeks ago she hadn’t even known the Outcasts existed. You are our entrance into Heaven, the Outcast had told her. In the end, when the Outcast had approached her, Daniel and the others had stared at Luce like she was the one who owed them something. He’d only been able to throw her reflection because he cared about her too much.Īnd Daniel? Did he care enough? She couldn’t tell.

And Miles had saved her, but even that wasn’t simple. She couldn’t think about her parents’ faces without wanting to turn back-not like she’d even know how to turn back inside an Announcer, anyway. Not after they’d wrecked her parents’ backyard, made it into another one of their dusty battlefields. Of course, both sides agreed on one thing: Everyone wanted to pull her out of the Announcer. Everything that had once been black and white now blended into gray.

They should have been easier to separate, but nothing was easy anymore. The calls grew harder to discern, until Luce couldn’t tell them apart at all: good or evil. Was that Daniel’s voice or Cam’s? Arriane’s or Gabbe’s? Was it Roland pleading that she come back now, or was that Miles? Echoes of her name bounced off the shadowy walls of the Announ cer, sending licks of heat rippling across her skin. The voices reached her in the murky darkness.
