“It’s okay. I am too. I saw stuff on Dragon’s ship that got me thinking. Aren’t Weld and Sveta cute?”

I looked. They were leaning against a pair of trees that had grown together—or one tree that had grown apart, with a seam running through it. Weld had his arm around Sveta, who leaned against him, and the wind from the craft had blown her hair around. Some had blown into his face and around his chest and shoulders—some, it looked like, had gotten snagged. He didn’t react or brush it away like someone else might, if they had hair across their face.

“Super cute.”

“I want to find someone like that one day,” she said.

Capricorn sat on a slab of stone that looked Tristan-created. Red armored, so it was Tristan in the armor right now, Byron as the observer. Cryptid was a few feet away, sitting on a seat that was much the same, but smaller. The coloring of the stone and the veins running through it made Cryptid easier to spot, as the camouflage extrapolated from the image of what he was sitting on and painted it up into his body, in fragments.

It was camouflage that would primarily work against someone who wasn’t actively looking for trouble, and primarily in static, dull environments. In the city or the immediate vicinity of strange textures, it wasn’t nearly as effective.

“And there they are,” Cryptid said. “Did you steal Dragon’s notes?”

“No!” Lookout said. “And I wouldn’t. She’s nice.”

“She gives me a vibe like Legend and Valkyrie do,” Sveta said.

“Good vibe or bad vibe?” Capricorn asked.

“Bad. Sorry,” Sveta said.

“So powerful they’re scary?” Capricorn asked.

“No. I think if it was that, I could deal with it. I’m scary,” Sveta’s voice was quiet as she said it. “But they give me this feeling, like they descend from the heavens and deign to deal with us mortals, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I could see that.”

“But also… Legend was tied into the Cauldron thing. I had to get the full story from Weld, but it’s why he left the Protectorate. He got caught.”

“He seemed remorseful, but I don’t know if that’s good enough.” Weld was as serious as I’d ever seen him.

“Where I get paranoid is that I have to wonder if Valkyrie, Dragon and some of those others are for real. Why are they that strong? What happened, and… if they’re on that level, are they tied into it, like some of the other powerful people were? Did they ignore stuff?”

“It makes for an uncomfortable feeling,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry if I offended anyone, saying stuff about their favorite people.”

There were a few heads that shook across our group.

“I like them,” Lookout said. “But I’m not offended either.”