His gaze fell to his boots. “I don’t know where to start, Aria. This is new to me. I want to tell you so much, but I don’t want to burden you with more than you want to know.”

“I want to know everything.”

He lifted his eyes, and Aria saw a change in them. She thought it was surprise at first. Then she realized it was tenderness.

“My family,” he began, “and yours, has been in the service of the Horn Blood Lords for generations. We are soldiers and advisers who hold the highest military positions. It’s the life I was born to, the one I knew I’d lead eventually, but twenty years ago, when I was close to your age, I wanted nothing to do with it. When I asked my father for a few years to be on my own, he granted me one. It was more than I had expected.”

Loran had music in his voice. It was beautiful.

“I’d only been traveling a month when a Hover chased me down on the edge of the Shield Valley. I found myself inside a Dweller Pod, a place I’d only ever heard about in rumors.”

Loran glanced behind him, out to the beach. “There is no forgiveness in the north. We do things a certain way, as you know by now. So when I was taken captive, I expected something along the lines of what happened to Peregrine. Your mother was the first person I saw when I came to. She did not look frightening.” He smiled to himself then, lost in an image of Lumina that Aria wished she could share. “She promised I wouldn’t be mistreated. She told me I would go home one day. I heard sincerity in her voice. I heard kindness. I believed her.”

As he spoke, Aria felt like she was wearing a Smarteye. Part of her listening to Loran. Part of her in a Realm in which Lumina was a young researcher, fascinated by an Outsider.

“From that moment on, I didn’t worry. I had left Rim to see what was different from what I knew.” He lifted his shoulders. “I couldn’t have landed in a better place.

“Her studies dealt with adaptations to stress. Dwellers, she explained, had less resilience to it than we do. Sometimes she’d put me into simulations in the Realms, but most of the time she asked me questions about the Outside. Eventually, she was answering my questions.” He ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know the exact moment that I fell in love with her, but I will never forget the moment she told me she was with child.