A house, high in a tree.

Ash, carrying a camera.

“You’re awake,” Connor said. Just a voice in the dark; small and fragile.

“Are you playing with my camera?” I asked, struggling to sit up. The camera clicked again. “You can’t take pictures in the dark, silly. Light striking the film is what makes a photograph. No light, no picture.”

He sat down on the bed beside me. Put his hand on my forehead. “Are you still sick?”

“I’m okay,” I said, feeling so tired that every word was an effort. “What happened?”

“You had a fit,” he said. “At the restaurant. Quang snapped you straight into bed, though. You’re lucky, because me and Mama would never have been able to carry you.”

“I’m superlucky,” I said.

He kissed my forehead, which is what Radha always did. The best medicine, as far as he knew.

“Thanks, brother,” I said. “I need to sleep, now.”

“Mama told me not to bother you,” he said.

“I’m glad you disobeyed her.”

And I was out, quick as that. Swallowed up by a dream. A memory. Something I blocked out.

Me and Ash, down at the train tracks. The nine women soldiers in her personal guard following at a careful distance. Armored stegosauruses on either side of us; mammoth-sized jaguars ahead of and behind us.

Storm clouds are piled up like black cliffs in the distance. They’ve been there for days. They’ll be there for days, like the storm is stalking us. Watching. Waiting.

“I’ve been feeling it more and more lately,” she says. “A tingle up my spine. I focus on it; I can feel it getting bigger and bigger—I just don’t know how to release it.”

“Your nine guards can’t help you?”

“They’re trying. It’s just a block I have, I guess.”

We are twelve. At breakfast, as I was spooning diced dragon fruit over a really very modest serving of yogurt, the queen had announced to the whole crowded room full of courtiers and servants: “The way that boy eats, you’d think he just came in off the street this morning.” And all of them giggled. And I’d spent most of the rest of the day crying. I was better now, but not by much.

“In two days, my guards are going to try something new,” Ash says, and I can hear the fear in her voice. Those nine soldiers love Ash to death and would gladly die for her, but they push her hard.

But I can’t feel pity for the princess’s problems. Not today. My own hurt feelings are echoing too loudly in my ears. Hurt feelings, and fear. Memories of hunger. Of how horrible the city could be.

Also, I’m superhungry, because I wasn’t about to eat that food after the queen made fun of me. So I’m not thinking straight. So please forgive me.