Perry tipped his chin at Roar. “I need you.” Roar followed him without question. He explained what he wanted in the elevator.

“I thought you’d already gone to her,” Roar said.

Perry stared at the metal doors. “I haven’t. . . . I did, but I didn’t see her.”

Roar laughed. “And you want me to go?”

“Yes. You, Roar.” Was he going to have to explain that Aria talked to him more easily?

Roar leaned against the elevator and crossed his arms. “Remember that time I was trying to talk to Liv and I fell off the roof?”

In the cramped elevator car, he couldn’t escape picking up the shift in Roar’s temper. The scent of longing. He’d always hoped Roar and Liv would outgrow their crush, but they’d always been wrapped up in each other.

“I was talking to her through that hole in the timbers, remember that, Perry? She was up in the loft and it had just rained. I lost my balance and slid right off.”

“I remember you running away from my father with your pants around your ankles.”

“That’s right. I tore them on a tile on the way down. I don’t think I’d ever seen Liv laugh so much. Almost made me want to stop running just to see her like that. Hearing it was pretty good, though. Best sound in the world, Liv’s laugh.” Roar’s smile faded after a moment. “He was fast, your father.”

“He was stronger than he was fast.”

Roar didn’t say anything. He knew how it had been for Perry growing up.

“Was there a point to that story?” Perry stepped out as soon as the elevator doors parted. “Are you coming?”

“Fall off your own roof, Perry,” he said as the door slid closed.

The elevator dropped back to the Navel, carrying away the sound of Roar’s laughter.

Aria was sitting at the edge of the bed when Perry stepped into her room. Her arms were crossed low, over her stomach. Only the small lamp by the bedside was lit. The light came off the shade in a perfect triangle, falling across her folded arms. The room held her scent. Violets of early spring. The first bloom. He could’ve gotten lost in that scent if it weren’t for the dankness of her temper.

Perry closed the door behind him. This room was smaller than the one he’d been given to share with Roar. He saw nowhere to sit but the bed. Not that he felt like sitting. But he didn’t want to stand by the door, either.

She looked over, her eyes swollen from crying. “Did Marron send you again?”

“Marron? No . . . he didn’t.” He shouldn’t have come. Why had he closed the door like he’d meant to stay? Now leaving would be strange.