With Tristan’s appearance, the mist had become a fresh outcropping of building, and Moonsong could see what Capricorn had been trying to do. A faster change would have created a thin jet of mist that bypassed the group.

As it was, it created the solid mass of building that hung in the air, for as long as it worked at emerging. Had it formed before, it would have been a shield.

Tribute died.

Capricorn looked up at her, lost and bewildered. The same as he’d appeared in the moments before he had released Byron from pseudo-death.

⊙

“I’ll leave you guys be,” Tristan said. “Sorry.”

“No,” Moonsong said. “I think we were done?”

She made it a question, and Tribute answered the question with a nod.

She’d wanted to reply to Tribute, answering what he’d said about Furcate and Tristan, but that train of thought had been dashed to pieces.

“Impatient?” Tribute asked. He was more alert, his tone of voice more guarded than before.

“Wrong word. Restless, is all. I want to do something.”

“That’s…” Moonsong fished for a civil answer, and in that fishing, stumbled over memories and scenes that made emotions kick up. Holding Byron as he screamed, the sense of betrayal, the horrible sense of victory when she’d finally beat him, uncovering his lies. That last one a feeling she never wanted to experience again. “That’s… very you, Tristan.”

Tristan snorted air through his nose. “You’re not wrong. Listen, I wanted to say thanks for being cool.”

“By said he forgave you, and I—but you were privy to that conversation.”

“Yeah.”

Again, that awkward pause.

Sveta and Furcate were chatting. A kid she recognized as one of Citrine’s hanger-ons was sitting on a bit of debris nearby, talking to Scribe.

Furcate, Moonsong noticed, had reduced back down to the one body. It was one of the ones from the rooftop, that had been set up as suicide bombers, that Sveta had rescued. The girl wore a decorated chainmail coif over a silk hood with two pointed ‘ears’ reinforced by wire from the coif, her mask that of a cat, mouth open, pushed back to the top of her head, so her face was exposed, light brown skin a touch red from the cold. Her costume didn’t really hold dirt or show much wear and tear, but the dark color scheme helped there. She looked too untouched by all of this, which made it harder to relate to her.

“…like how it’s two steps forward, one step back,” Sveta said, holding out one arm. It was broken down into strips, and the strips were trying to form braids and other complex arrangements, instead of lying flat. “I had a body like I wanted at the same time the rest of my life was falling apart. But it was one great, nearly perfect thing and now it’s not perfect anymore.”