There was an old saying among prisoners: you don't start appreciating nature until you've been locked away from it. The sky, the trees, the simple act of feeling wind against your skin—all of it becomes precious when bars stand between you and freedom.
But that analogy didn't correlate with the current situation as Noah, Sophie, and Lila broke through Earth's atmosphere in a Grey family ship. Because what they were seeing wasn't the freedom they'd been desperate to return to.
It was a graveyard.
Noah's forehead pressed against the viewport window, his breath fogging the reinforced glass. His eyes couldn't stay fixed on any one thing for more than a second. The devastation sprawled beneath them like a wound that had been carved into the planet itself.
