The golden leaf trembles in the morning breeze, a single, perfect spot of vibrant life against the scorched, blackened bark of the surface tether.
I kneel in the damp earth of the courtyard, my heavily bandaged hands hovering inches from the tiny shoot. I don't touch it. I'm terrified that if I do, I might break it. Or worse, that it might break me.
Beside me, Asher is sitting cross-legged in the dirt, his mismatched eyes wide, staring at his own palms. His breathing is shallow, his small shoulders tense. He is twelve years old, and he is looking at his hands as if they belong to a stranger.
"I didn't mean to," Asher whispers, his voice carrying the deep, grounded resonance of the Mortar, but laced with a fragile, trembling uncertainty. "I just... I felt the tree was sad. It was dead, M
