His head turns toward us at the sound of our arrival, and every muscle in his shoulders stiffens. His trembling worsens.

“Our second Skyhunter,” the Chief Architect tells me, her hands folded behind her back. “As you can see, he has just had his eyes enhanced. A process you’re familiar with, I’m sure.”

I remember this procedure right away. It’s a process that—for several weeks—leaves you feeling like you’ve been completely blinded, with a deep, aching pain behind your sockets. The procedure also makes you colder than you should be. When I’d undergone it, I’d shivered even in warm rooms, even when the windows were left open to the summer air.

The hot bath is necessary to stabilize his body’s heat.

The nausea stirring in my stomach lurches, and I wince, fighting back the urge to retch. His pain suddenly seems to be mine, and for a moment, I feel as if I’m the one undergoing the transformation again. In the low light, his hair—already going gray with the metallic additives in his bloodstream—reminds me of Red.

I force myself to nod calmly. “His progress seems slower than before,” I sign to the translator, dutifully asking the questions that Constantine wants.

“He had a close call earlier in the week,” the Chief Architect explains as she wrings her hands unconsciously. “His heart stopped during his eye operation, and we had to postpone it in order to let his body rest. We think he’s out of the danger zone.”

Her words make me want to laugh. Out of the danger zone. As if they are at all concerned about our health.

“Where is this one from?” I ask her. This isn’t one of Constantine’s questions.

“Tanapeg,” she replies.

One of the border states. I wonder if he might be who my mother is talking about.

“May I?” I ask the Architect, and she bows her head slightly to me, giving me permission.

I skirt my way around the room until I’m standing over the young man in the bath. He senses my presence. I see his skin prickle at my nearness, as if he knows somehow that something powerful and deadly is at his side. Then I lean down to take a better look at him.

No scars behind his ears. Nothing else to go off. But I still linger, taking in his face and his body. He nearly died during the eye procedure—he thinks this is torturous. But he hasn’t yet begun the process of steel infusion, of installing the great black wings on his back. There is so much pain ahead of him, and no way for me to prepare him for the worst of it.

Did he leave a family behind? Who once called him son? Did they mourn him? Do they know where he ended up? Are they also imprisoned here, like Red’s family had been, or are they perhaps—mercifully—dead? Trapped in this room, blinded and frightened, who does he think about? Does he weep for anyone in his sleep, as I wept for Red?