Chapter 58

**Lev**

I was born in a cell. People like to romanticise beginnings, with cradle songs, soft light, and a mother’s hands. Mine were concrete, bleach, and a bare bulb that buzzed like an insect trapped in glass. My mother was a wraith. My father was a wraith. I was their consequence. Dmitri doesn’t allow consequences, but he allowed me.

They kept me with her for the first year because she could fe