"No, he's definitely already formidable," says Curtis; the small, crooked smile returns, then fades as fast as it arrived. "He was kind of my second-in-command during the fight."

He hated the way Mason said it. How she taunted him with it. Like Curtis tossed Edgar aside as easily as she would fling unwanted scraps back to the tail, like making that choice to keep going forward didn't mean anything.