Amaris did her best to smile at them. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and blinked at her friends.

Malik set the water on her desk. “Still drunk?”

She shrugged. It was a nonanswer, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I thought as much! We can’t have you hungover for our rematch tomorrow. When I beat you, it must be fair and square. I didn’t see you drinking any water between your beers. As for the kid here,” Malik said, ruffling the boy’s hair, “Brel needed an extra hand. One for you and the other for himself. It would have been nice if someone had brought me a pastry.”

She shook any remnants of her dream from her mind. Nox was not in Uaimh Reev. Amaris was not in Farleigh. Two of her reever brethren were in her room, and they needed her attention far more than any demand of her sleeping mind, no matter how alluring its pull. Amaris smiled sleepily at the boys, rolling her eyes at their fussing, and selected the pastry in favor of the glass of water. Malik saw himself out with a happy parting gesture.

Amaris had kept a bestiary tome by her bed, as studying the dark creatures of the world had become a favorite fascination of hers since her arrival at the reev. There was a baseline knowledge required of all reevers regarding monsters and demons, but she’d developed a rather particular obsession with a favorite zoologist, digesting everything written by the fastidious fae, learning everything there was to know about the continent’s beasts.

Brel sat on her bed to spend his time in companionable silence. She’d adapted, learning how to talk to him and hold daily conversations, despite his parents’ actions preventing him from verbally responding.

Amaris grabbed the tome and turned her book to Brel. She did what she could to involve him in friendly exchanges. She slid a small, mostly blank notebook that she’d kept on her desk to the space beside him on the bed.

“Have you ever seen any of the creatures in the zoology book?” she asked. Amaris held the bestiary up, showing the boy some of the more frightening pictures.

Brel wiped the pastry crumbs on his pants. She’d offered it to him to flip through, but he didn’t need to look at the pictures.

Without hesitating, he wrote, Yes.

Her eyes widened. He’d been so young when he’d arrived, and she didn’t think he ever left the reev. She spoke her questions, and he penned his answers. She flipped through pages and began to gesture while asking, “Which one?”

He took the book from her and flipped to a picture of a vageth. It was a canine with amphibious features, the smooth skin of a salamander.