Book One
The Saint of Orion
“Every team needs someone who can hold the line.”
They found Joan Byrne at sixteen in Bardstown, Kentucky, and told her the thing that kept happening around her had a name, a grade, and a price. Every gift is paid for in minutes off the person using it. Minutes to spend, nights to buy back. Jo learned the arithmetic the day she couldn't afford the one life that mattered.
Six years on and now she runs point for Team Orion, a Greybriar Section Six unit that pulls Charisms out of the Aviary — a network that traffics gifted people, because a gift with a price on it is a thing worth owning. Her grading card reads high in two classes and struck in a third: no approved trial exists for what Jo does. After her first operation, the team names her the Saint of Orion.
Then the team crosses something that doesn't spend Charisms. It consumes them. And it has been eating for a very long time.
Drafted · in revision
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