“I do,” I said quietly.

As a herpetologist, Graham had been cleaning out invasive species—things that shouldn’t be there, snakes whose owners had allowed them to escape down drains, spiders and frogs and mosquitos that had hitched rides on cargo ships and been brought over by wildlife smugglers—for most of his career. He would call me from the Everglades with a sack full of pythons in his hand and a grin on his face, like he’d just improved the world through the simple act of putting a bunch of snakes back where they belonged. Things that interfered with the proper functionality of an ecosystem offended him on a deep, integral level.

I put my hand on his arm, letting my fingers draw a delicate pattern there, tracing the veins and hoping he wouldn’t realize that was what I was doing. “I’ve been here for a long time, though. A whole bunch of us have. We’re not invasive. This is where we’re from. Right here.”

“Stasia, you realize you’re the vanguard of an invasion. ‘Invasive’ is in the name.” He looked at me, clearly troubled. “Can you not see that? That you’re not supposed to be here?”

I pushed away from him, startled. For a moment, I just stared. The words to express my shock and dismay refused to come, locked somewhere behind my tongue, filling my throat with bile. Finally, I forced myself to swallow and asked, “Do you really think that? That I’m not supposed to be here?”

“Stasia—”

“Because I wouldn’t exist if I weren’t here. Not this version of me. I don’t know who the original Anastasia would have grown up to be, and I’m sorry she had to die, but you know I’m here because she died. Because a seed fell from space and swallowed her when she was only three years old. Ate her up like a monster out of a fairy tale. I did that. Me. I fell from space, and I ate a little girl, and I took her life, and I grew up to be a woman who loves you. Do you not want me to love you?”

My voice had been rising steadily as I spoke. On the last word, I pushed myself away and sat up, glaring at him fiercely.

Graham rolled more slowly into a sitting position, his hands raised defensively, like he was afraid he needed to ward me off. “That’s not what I said.”

Everyone was watching us. They weren’t saying anything, and somehow that just infuriated me more. “You just said I don’t belong here.”