“Right. We can debate it if you want,” Tristan answered, with a hint of the stubborn tone I’d learned to watch out for, like he was willing to fight over it. He sighed. “I asked them to find other people. Goddess put us all in the worst mental states and circumstances, where we had zero reason to trust one another, only protocols and rules to go by, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“It reassured Byron, I think, that things were that bad and we could still cooperate. Reassured me. I’m not sure I trusted myself, before that, like I could’ve done something stupid again if things lined up wrong. Ever since, I’ve been reaching out to people we knew back in the day, because I wanted to own up, and I was so goddamn sick of running into random people from our past and having everyone think they needed to worry about Byron.”

“They know about his current state?”

“Sleeping ninety percent of the time, might never get full use of his right arm again? Most do. I know he was in contact with a few online. I had to keep my distance from all that, which meant he had room to reconnect and find his niche, I guess.”

“He’s grown up a lot in the past few weeks.”

Tristan nodded. “The contracting we’ve been doing with Barcode has been using them as private investigators with a deeper knowledge of the cape scene for Byron’s sake. Ninety percent of it was for Byron, five percent was me covering my ass and Breakthrough’s ass, making sure we wouldn’t be attacked by heroes with good intentions who wanted to save Byron from me or some shit.”

I thought of Moonsong attacking us in the old Wardens’ headquarters and nodded. Beside me, Kenzie turned and waved. It was the ‘eyes in the back of her head’ thing, given the timing of it. I followed her gaze and saw Sveta navigating her way between the tables and chairs of the dining area. Behind her, I had a glimpse of Weld and Slician.

“What’s the other five percent?” Kenzie asked.

“Me looking up an old boyfriend,” Tristan said. “I haven’t had the guts to make the call. I’m ninety percent sure he hates me, and I rationalized away the fact I hadn’t called by telling myself I couldn’t even do anything with him if he was forgiving and single. Except now I theoretically could.”

“Ahhhh,” I said.

“I think that’s great,” Kenzie leaned forward as she talked to Tristan. “Love, making up for old mistakes. I think you should go for it. Life’s too lonely to not be with people.”

Sveta took her seat beside me, giving me a bit of a hug. She handed me a manila envelope with some heft to it. “Present.”