“Laila!”

Hypnos caught her around the shoulders.

“What happened?” asked Zofia, rushing to her.

“I-I don’t know,” said Laila.

Her body felt too still, too quiet. She felt her heart beat slowly, as if fighting through syrupy blood.

“You’re hurt,” said Zofia.

“No, I’m not, I—”

Hypnos lifted her bejeweled hand. There, Laila saw a slash across her palm. She must have grabbed the wooden spike at the dock too hard.

“Here,” said Zofia, tearing off a bit of her scorched hem as a bandage.

Laila took it blankly.

“You’ve been through a lot,” said Hypnos carefully. “Why don’t you stay with the boat? We won’t be long, will we?”

Enrique stammered. “I can’t say for certain, but—” Hypnos must have thrown him a look because Enrique nodded quickly. “Stay and rest, Laila. We’ll be fine.”

“Are you hurting?” asked Zofia.

“No,” said Laila, staring blankly at her hand.

She must have nodded and waved them off, but the whole time her mind screamed with something she could not bring herself to say aloud. She hadn’t lied to Zofia. She hadn’t felt any hurt.

Laila hadn’t felt anything at all.

5

ENRIQUE

Enrique Mercado-Lopez knew many things.

He knew about history and languages, myths and legends. He knew how to kiss well, eat well, and dance well, and though he was uncertain about many situations at the moment, there was one thing he knew without a shadow of a doubt: This was not his place.

And he was not the only one who knew it.

A few paces behind him, Zofia and Hypnos walked in weighted silence. They expected him to know what to do next. They expected him to lead, to give commands, to plan the next steps … but that wasn’t Enrique.

You wouldn’t belong, an old voice whispered in his skull. Know your place.

His place.

Enrique could never seem to figure it out. When he was a child, he remembered trying out for the school theatre. All night, he’d practiced the hero’s lines. He had propped up his toys on chairs as his future audience. He had bothered his mother until, exasperated, she gave up and helped him practice his lines by reading the script of the female costar. But on the day of the auditions, the nun running the play had stopped him after he said two sentences.

“Anak.” She laughed. “You don’t want to be the hero! Far too much work and far too many lines. And the front of the stage? It’s a place of terror, trust me … you don’t belong there. But don’t worry, I have a special role for you!”

The special role ended up being a tree.

His mother had been very proud though, and Enrique had reasoned that trees were symbolically quite important, and so perhaps he could be the hero next time.

But further attempts ended the same way. Enrique entered writing contests, only to find that his opinions had not found an audience. He would try out for debate contests, and if they didn’t dismiss his ideas outright, they would take one look at his face, the Spanish features blending with his Visayan heritage, and in the end, all the responses were the same: