When he grinned, his teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He’d smeared his skin in rich gray mud and it made his teeth especially bright. Caledonia had done the same, coating her ivory skin and fiery locks so the moon wouldn’t reveal her too soon.

“Hardly,” he said. “You’re just better than the alternative.”

Fighting the urge to laugh, Caledonia tipped her eyes skyward where stars arranged themselves against a black curtain. Without meaning to, she traced the patterns Donnally had taught her to see. She found the crab and the two fish, the tragic young girl and her hero. She found the great whale and the notes of his song.

As though reading her thoughts, Pine said, “Punching the Net will mean leaving him behind for good.”

Her eyes snapped back to his. Without saying it, she knew he meant her brother.

“You did all you could,” he added with the tired resignation of someone who’d been left and who also understood the choice to leave.

Regret pinched at the back of her throat. She clenched her jaw, fighting against a gentle swell of tears.

“Pine?”

He turned, expectant.

“How did you come back from being a Bullet?”

The faint laughter of waves slapping at the shore slid between them. A look of pain blossomed on Pine’s face. He knew why she was asking. And even if he didn’t care about hurting her, he didn’t want to be the one to give her this answer. He grimaced, turning his face toward the ferns at their backs where thirteen additional faces waited silently for their signal.

With a reluctant sigh, he faced her again. “None of us comes back, Caledonia. It’s not possible.”

“But—”

“None of us,” he repeated. “If we had, we wouldn’t be here right now, ready to dive into a gunfight without guns of our own.” His expression was hard, but not unkind. “Think of us like individual ships. We’ve been through battle, taken damage to the hull, and even if you can pound it back into shape again, it will never be the same. It’s been changed on an essential level. We didn’t come back from being Bullets. We just got out of the chamber.”

It was what she needed to hear, but not what she wanted. Triple would have told her that it was possible under the right circumstances. Sledge would have told her it was a process. But Pine. He knew what she was really asking.

She tipped her head once more to the sky and swallowed a lump of sorrow. She spotted the crab, Donnally’s favorite collection of stars, and for the first time she acknowledged with all her heart that he was out of reach. There would be no second chance to find him. He was alive and out there, and that was going to have to be enough.

I’m sorry, Donnally.

“There it is,” Pine whispered.