“I see,” Aria said. Fealty. Allies. Oaths taken at the point of death. They were ordinary concepts in his life.

“Maybe I’ll head north,” he continued. “See if I can find my sister and get her to the Horns. Maybe I can fix that ruffle before it’s too late. And I want to see what I can find about the Still Blue.”

Aria wondered where that would leave him and Roar. It didn’t seem fair to keep two people who loved each other apart.

“What about you?” he asked. “When we find your mother, will you go back to those virtual places? The Realms?”

She liked the way he’d said Realms. Slow and resonant. She liked even better the way he’d said when we find your mother. Like it would happen. Like it was inevitable.

“I think I’ll get back to singing. It was always something my mother made me do. I never . . . I never really wanted to sing. Now I have the urge to do it. Songs are stories.” She smiled. “Maybe I’ve got my own stories to tell now.”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“You’ve been thinking about my voice?”

“Yeah.” He gave a shrug that managed to seem both shy and offhand. “Since that first night.”

Aria had to rein in a ridiculously proud smile. “That was from Tosca. An ancient Italian opera.” The song was for a male tenor. When Aria sang it, she brought it up just enough to get it into her range, but still kept its lost, mournful quality. “It’s about a man, an artist who’s been sentenced to die, and he’s singing about the woman he loves. He doesn’t think he’ll ever see her again. It’s my mother’s favorite aria.” She smiled. “Besides me.”

Perry pulled his legs around and sat against the rail, an expectant smile on his face.

Aria laughed. “Seriously? Here?”

“Seriously.”

“All right. . . . I have to stand. It’s better if I stand.”

“Then stand.”

Perry rose to his feet with her, leaning his hip against the rail. His smile was distracting, so she gazed up at the Aether for a few moments, breathing the cool air into her lungs as anticipation stirred inside of her. She’d missed this.

The lyrics flowed out of her, springing straight from her heart. Words full of drama and wild abandon that had always embarrassed her before, because who flung themselves at raw emotion like that?

She did it now.

She let the words fly across the roof and past the trees. She lost herself in the aria, letting it carry her off. But even as she sang, she knew the man below had stopped cutting wood and the dog had stopped barking. Even the trees hushed to hear her sing. When she was done, she had tears in her eyes. She wished her mother could’ve heard her. She’d never sounded better.