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  Unbreakable  Copyright © 2022 by Seanan McGuire. All rights reserved. Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2022 by Julie Dillon. All rights reserved. Interior design Copyright © 2022 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.  Ebook Edition   ISBN  978-1-64524-104-1 Subterranean Press PO Box 190106 Burton, MI 48519  subterraneanpress.com  Manufactured in the United States of America For Olivia. From one magical girl to another.  S eattle burned. The entire horizon was lit up red and crimson as a New Year’s Eve firework display, the inferno licking at the sky, so bright and smoky that it blotted out the stars. There was nothing left but starless red-gray sky, and one shaking teenage girl in a brown and green dress that looked something like a costume and something like a uniform and something like a burial shroud. Piper had fallen to her knees in the ash and wreckage after she saw Paisley go down. She’d been doing her best to keep fighting until then, but Paisley was their leader, Paisley was the one who was supposed to survive even if the Shatterverse slaughtered all the rest of them. None of them mattered as long as Paisley survived. Seeing her fall . . . But now Paisley was dead, and Elena was dead, and Ashley was dead, and Fergus was gone, and Merit had betrayed them, and she hadn’t seen it in time to stop it. It was just Yuina and Piper now. They were all alone. They were supposed to be Unbreakable Starlight, and they were broken. But at least Paisley had kept her word. She had fallen like a star. When she had phased the last catastrophic attack of the Shatterverse forces out of the world, she had saved Seattle. It was all over but the burning now. The burning, and the grieving. Everyone was gone. Everyone was lost. Even Yuina was gone, running toward the burning city in the vain hope that she might be able to find someone she could still save. Piper wept, shoving the physical sensations of her body further and further away to block out the pain, and so she didn’t even feel it when a soft, furry body brushed her cheek, didn’t open her eyes or lift her head. Fuyu, the White Dream, last of the three Heralds who had invited Unbreakable Starlight into the battle, darted past her and onto a heap of rubble, nose twitching frantically as she turned her face toward the smoky sky and the battle still raging in the heights. “This isn’t over,” she said, and spread her wings, launching herself into the air. She became a mote of bright, blazing light, and she was gone, and Piper, who had never realized she was there in the first place, was alone. For the first time since she had accepted her invitation, Piper was entirely alone. PART I: The Power of Love  W hen writing the history of the world, scholars and historians—and the occasional folklorist—are perpetually confronted with the question of how to best document the aspects we would rather forget, the elements that make us feel our failures as a species, the revelations that make us question the existence of a logical and compassionate universe. The first recorded appearance of a chosen magical protector—the current preferred term for these supernaturally empowered children, called “warriors,” “healers,” and simply “the chosen” by cultures around the world—is found in texts documenting ancient Sumer, where the appearance of Enki and Ninhursag has been recorded. The two enter the record as we have it at roughly the same time, and some modern scholars theorize that Enki was a partial or full inspiration for the character of Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh . Based on what can be reconstructed from surviving text fragments, these figures manifested the classic powers now associated with magical protectors. Enki was “strong as a lion” and “swift as a gazelle,” empowered with the ability to understand the language of beasts and compel them, as needed, to his aid. He could further thrive for days upon the smallest crumb of food, the slightest drop of water, and could pass this vitality on to others with the touch of his hand. Ninhursag, meanwhile, could call forth grain from the ground and water from the firmament, cracking the very stones themselves in twain to nurture her people. She could knit flesh and bone back together with the touch of her hands, and according to some partial, fragmentary accounts, she once called a friend back from the lands of the dead. By its very nature, the accounting of Enki and Ninhursag is incomplete, worn away by the passage of time. This is true of almost all early accounts. The most complete narrative we have been able to recover is dated nearly three hundred years after the age of Enki and Ninhursag, and comes from Southern Asia, originally recorded in Sanskrit. It chronicles the first full confirmed team of magical protectors. Hansa, Jyoyi, Falguni, and Adyant demonstrated the family of elemental abilities which have since been documented globally, complementing and supporting one another in a battle which lasted, depending on the account, between twenty and fifty years. These accounts, too, are fragmentary, thanks to the ravages of time and history itself; pieces are missing. We are able to say with some confidence that Falguni was the first to die, and that she did not return after that first inevitable fall. Neither did her companions. This would indicate that while their group did include a healer, Jyoyi, her powers did not extend to resurrection. This makes the success of their team somewhat unusual, unless they included members who were, for whatever reason, not preserved in the final record. When looking at accounts of earlier magical protectors, it is important to remember that even modern accounts of individual protectors will at times misattribute or improperly record their powers, making it difficult to understand how some of