The light fell out of the sky, and the dark came crawling in. Moonie and I stayed with Hex.

The night sleep came on the witch queen first, down on the ground under her dead tree where the dark got darkest earliest.

Moonie looked at me. Her legs were already turning, the swinging slowing down until her knees were solid and it stopped altogether.

“Angel, will Hex and the babies—” The stone covered up her mouth before she could finish asking, closing over her head and swallowing up her wings.

The answer was probably not. If something came at night, there wouldn’t be anything I could do.

But I told Moonie, “I’ll protect them,” anyway just before the stone flowed up and over me. Her face couldn’t change, but I could tell she felt better hearing me say it.

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That night stretched out longer than any other night I’d lived through. I watched the piece of the forest floor I could see with my frozen eyes. Things moved in the dark, but I couldn’t turn to find out what made the noises.

Then I got to worrying that maybe it was the stars moving. Maybe they were swimming down from that cold black river. Maybe they had just been waiting for me to look somewhere else so they could catch me unawares. I hurt I was so scared. Every second the stars didn’t attack, the pain clenched tighter.

When the music started, it was such a shock that I almost moved. This hot sizzle shot through my guts and legs and shoulders, and the stone over my littlest finger cracked. It filled back in right away.

The music floated up from Moonie. It was her nighttime song. I’d been thinking too hard about Hex on the ground and the stars creeping behind me. I’d forgotten where Moonsinger got her name—she sang when the moon came out.

It wasn’t a mouth-moving song. The music came out from the stone, like her whole body was making it. I couldn’t see the moon yet, but the way she was looking, she must be able to.

The fear pain eased then. The moon was good. It would fight the stars off if they tried to come.