Page 52

I groan and slide down until my head hits the cushion. “Why are you both like this?”

“Because you love us,” Ramona says sweetly.

“And because we’re right,” Leaf adds.

We lapse into comfortable silence for a moment. The fire is popping and people laugh faintly from a nearby corridor. Leaf is lazily flickering an orb of sunfyre between his fingers. It feels good. Safe. Like the Watch isn’t constantly measuring me.

Then the door creaks open.

“AKEMI THE STARWATCHER?”

All three of us jump.

Esther barrels into the room like that time when Nightmare broke into the kitchen and accidentally ate a bag of sugar cane. She’s wearing an honest-to-suns nightgown—floor-length, pale blue, embroidered with tiny moons—and fuzzy slippers shaped like rabbits. On her head is a matching nightcap that droops to one side, tassel bobbing as she skids to a halt.

I sit up so fast I nearly fall off the couch.

“Oh,” I say faintly. “Hi, Esther.”

She gasps, hands flying to her mouth. “She spoke to me.”

Ramona chokes. Leaf goes very, very still.

“You—uh—yes,” I say. “That’s… how conversations work.”

Esther advances reverently, eyes shining. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your private starwatcher gathering.”

“It’s not a starwatcher gathering,” I say quickly.

“But I heard you were here,” she continues, undeterred, “and I just had to say how incredible it is that you channel starlight, like actual celestial resonance, which I read about once in a restricted appendix—”

Leaf clears his throat. “Is she… always like this?”

Ramona whispers back, “This is toned down.”

Esther finally seems to notice them. She squints. “Oh. Hello. Are you… friends of Akemi?”

“Yes,” Ramona says, bright and sharp. Knowing her, she’s probably somewhat offended that Esther didn’t remember her from the party in the woods on our first night. “We’re her emotional support.”

“And bodyguards,” Leaf adds. “For situations like this.”

Esther beams. “How wonderful! I’ve always wanted to be adjacent to greatness.”

I open my mouth to suggest that maybe Esther should be adjacent somewhere else, but she’s already dropped onto the edge of a nearby chair, hugging a pillow to her chest.

“So,” she says, breathless. “Did you see any visions today?”

“No,” I say.

“Any prophetic dreams?”

“No.”

“Did the stars whisper?”

“No.”

She nods fervently. “Amazing.”