On the night my parents promised to bring me through the veil, they used my name to keep the gate open and left me on the wrong side for the seventh time. When my soul lamp went dark, the city called it a death. I called it the first honest thing my family had ever given me. But the lamp was also the anchor holding my parents' place in the heavens, and the people who had profited from that arrangement weren't ready to let me go. If I survived the severing, would I still want the family that had abandoned me—or had I finally learned to live without them?