This weird thing we have, it started when my depression was at its worst. When I felt so alone I could almost scream. When I felt like the weight pressing down on my chest would crack my rib cage and crush my heart. I loved him for it, for how he made me feel, for how much he cared about me, for continuing to do this even though it couldn’t have been easy—because I suspected he wanted more.

Afterward, two squirrels fought and chattered in the tree below us.

“Dirty little things,” I said, watching them through his bedroom window.

“I kind of like them,” Connor said. We were spooned together. His bare skin was cool to the touch, but the heat of him warmed me up. This part was almost better than the sex itself.

“You would,” I said.

“What does that mean?” he said, laughing.

“It means that you’re a good person,” I said. “We’re not all like you. Some of us are monsters.”

Eighteen

Solomon

Two terra-octopi chattered and fought, in the tree above us. A perpetual problem, in the Underbridge. The side of Radha’s hut was covered in dried ink.

“Dirty little things,” Ash said.

“They really are,” I said, marveling at the fact that she was almost using full sentences now.

“I’ll be right back,” Niv said, getting up from the floor where we sat. “I need to contact the Palace. See if I can connect with somebody there who trusts me.”

“Okay,” Ash said. “Tell my mom hello.”

I laughed. Her sense of humor was returning too.

“Four slow knocks is me,” Niv said, demonstrating on the door. “Anyone else, hide Ash in the back room. Okay?” He disappeared into the Underbridge.

Ash looked around the little house. Every inch of it was familiar and beloved to me, every cluttered shelf and worn-out appliance and sprig of dried herbs hanging from the walls, but I wondered how it would appear to someone used to living in a palace.

Her voice was barely a whisper, so low I didn’t hear her at first when she said: “This is where you went.”

“Not right away,” I said. “I lived down at the docks for a while. Sleeping wherever I could find a safe, dark space to curl up.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but her words were slurring and her eyes were getting a glazed look. Were the palace sorcerers working to strengthen their spell?

I took her hand, and pressed it to my face. Smelled the faint ginger scent of her.

“You’re so warm,” she said.

“You’re so cold,” I told her.

“I—”

But whatever else she had to say, she couldn’t say it.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re okay.”

She smiled, squeezed my hand very faintly.

Four knocks at the door, and I let Niv back in.