I Today is my eighteenth birthday. Tomorrow I swear off love. It’s absurd. I’ve never kissed a girl, never asked anyone out. I’ve never slipped my arm around a waist, hoping for encouragement to let it stay. I’ve never danced entangled in another’s limbs, never flirted in a hallway or teased someone and walked away. And yet tomorrow, when I give up love, everything will change. I’ll still be Ander—blond and pale, immune to illness, able to blend into any background—but I won’t be me anymore. I won’t be what I am today. Because for as long as I have known Eureka, my love for her has defined me. And though she knows nothing of my existence, I’ve known her all my life. My secret dies in the woods tonight, along with a thousand smaller passions. The Passage is what matters, not the life I’ll lose. A knock on my door startles me. My uncle doesn’t wait, enters my dark room. “Are you packed?” Albion closes the blinds above my bed, erasing the knife made of moonlight that was splitting my chest in two. Albion makes a room feel cold. Like all my relatives, his movements make no sound. He has no scent. His voice is clear but somehow never disturbs the silence. Only his shape and his effect on the temperature tell me that I’m not