They’d arrived just before supper—unfortunate timing. Dozens of people milled around, waiting for the call to eat. Others stood at their windows and crowded their doors, watching with wide eyes. One of Gray’s boys pointed, while the other giggled at his side. Brooke rose from a bench in front of her house, looking from him to Aria and back. In a guilty flash, Perry remembered a conversation he’d had with her over the winter. He’d told Brooke they couldn’t be together because he had too much on his mind. That too much had been Aria—the girl who, at that time, he thought he’d never see again.

Nearby, Bear and Wylan stood talking with Reef. They looked over, falling silent. Some instinct kept Perry moving toward his house. He’d deal with them soon enough. He didn’t see the one person whose help he could use right now: Roar.

Perry stopped before his door and nudged aside a basket of kindling with his foot. He looked at Aria standing beside him and felt like he should say something. Welcome? You’ll be safe here? Everything seemed too formal.

“It’s small,” he said finally.

He stepped inside, cringing as he saw blankets scattered across the floor and dirty mugs on the table. Clothes lay tossed in a pile in the corner, and a stack of books along the far wall had toppled over. The sea was half an hour away, but there was a dusting of sand on the floorboards beneath his feet. He supposed it could’ve looked worse for a house shared by half a dozen men.

“The Six sleep here,” he explained. “I met them after you …” He couldn’t say left. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t say the word. “They’re my guard now. Marked, all of them. You’ve met Reef, Twig, and Gren already. The rest are brothers: Hyde, Hayden, and Straggler. Seers, the three of them. Strag’s name is actually Haven, but … you’ll see. It suits him.” He rubbed his chin, forcing himself to shut up.

“Do you have a candle or a lamp?” she asked.

Only then did he notice the dimness. To him, the room’s lines were cut in sharp relief. To Aria—or anyone else—they’d be lost. He was always aware of being a Scire, but he forgot about his vision until times like this. He was a Seer, but the real power of his eyes was the keenness of his sight in darkness. Aria had once called it a mutation—an effect of the Aether that had warped his Sense more than others’. He thought of it more as a curse, a reminder of the Seer mother who’d died bringing him to life.