“Birth. A day before you’re born, you’re just as conscious as the day of your actual birth, did you know that? You’re as completely developed. The only difference is, you’re still inside your mother’s womb, and the womb is everything—your universe. Then out you come and take your first breath and the world you knew vanishes and here you are—in a new one.”

My heart drums. My hands feel clammy. The stars feel close enough to touch.

“Something Prof told me,” Malik adds into the silence.

“I like it,” I say. “It actually makes sense.”

“I mean, what are the chances of being born at all?” Malik says. “Basically, zero, right? But here we are. You and me. All of us. We’ve won the lottery, Ana. That shouldn’t make you feel like you don’t matter. It should make you feel you do.”

I clam up. The night is bright and freezing. I have goose bumps, but not from the cold. Here we are. Malik and me, inches apart. Worlds away. You kissed me, I want to say. We kissed. Lips on lips. All that mad electricity, that closeness.

“That Reaper,” I say, scraping the barrel for conversation to cover my lameness. “It was a human once, right?”

Malik nods, says nothing.

“But then it Fell into the Between and changed forever.”

“It happens,” he says.

“And it happened to her. To Issi.” The words leave my mouth before my brain can stop them.

I watch Malik’s profile. His jaw tightens.

When he looks at me, his eyes are almost black. “You wanna talk about that?”

“Not if you don’t. I just thought—”

“She was beautiful,” he interrupts. “Like you. And, like you, she had this wild streak. Didn’t care about rules. I suppose I liked that about her.” Malik pauses, runs his fingers over the stubble on his jaw. “The day it happened was nothing special. Routine search-and-rescue mission for some lost Normal. But Issi…she’d been Falling on her own for weeks in a row. So, the Fall we made that day…it was one too many.”

I stare out at the night, unable to speak.

“I should’ve seen it coming,” Malik says. “I should’ve seen the signs. But I didn’t. And then she was gone. Out of my life. Like everyone else that…”

“Malik—”

“You shouldn’t get close to me,” he says, rolling onto his side, away from me. “It’s a death sentence.”

His words sting. The moment—whatever moment it might have been—is lost. I put my hand on his shoulder and he shrugs it off.

My heart breaks. And breaks.

“Get some rest,” Malik murmurs. “You’ll need it.”