No saving moon swam in the black water that night. The stars were out alone.

I watched them with stone-covered eyes, wondering why they never attacked. They’d had so many chances. They had their chance now. But they just stayed up there. Hungry. Hateful. Glaring down at what they wouldn’t come get.

The thought of Cherie on that pile of naked, hollow angel bodies burst inside my head.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound through the stone, but the red open wounds inside me roared until the black water shook. Ripples spread out between the stars.

They pulled back, ducking down in the water to hide, like a bunch of frightened angels startled in the hot springs.

Hiding from me.

When the last of the black water drained away and the cowardly stars disappeared, the stone fell away. I stood up, threw my wings and fists out wide, and crowed. Not triumph. Not joy at surviving another night. A warning.

The gashes and broken bones were gone, healed by the stone like always, but that rage was still there inside me. Cherie was gone, stolen by the gods, but she was still there. Still mine.

Then I heard it. A distant, trilling song.

I took a few running steps in that direction, then jumped into the air, taking off. Moonie was somewhere singing.

My wingbeats drowned out some of her song, but I caught bits and pieces, things like how Angelpunk had fought a monster with Moose, how he didn’t care that the witch queens and bearded ladies didn’t like him or that Thrasher wanted to fight him. How he once tried to give little Moonie a knife so she would be safe when he wasn’t around, and how if he wasn’t dead, he should come home already.

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Fat wet drops hit me, plips against my face and thops on my hair and feathers. Moonie was singing me back, but the rainfrogs must be singing with her, calling down the rain. It hissed against the tall grass below me, splattering back up to make a low, hanging cloud of wet.

Finally, trees appeared at the edge of the mist. Their leaves had all gone red or yellow, but I saw the orange-red shade of Moonie’s hair and feathers, hanging and straggly in the rain. She was perched on a broken branch, picking apart the bark while she sang.

I banked and headed for her position.

She raised her head, saw me, and went back to picking at the bark without even a break in the music.

Then her huge, green eyes went wide, and her song screeched up into ear-stabbing range. She launched herself off her perch, waving both bark-stained hands at me and trilling almost too high to hear. She landed at the tree line, bouncing up on her toes and grinning at me and still waving.

“You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” Her arms and shoulders were even smaller than I remembered, like twigs covered in skin. The rain weighed down her sundress and her red hair. She fluffed her feathers up some to get them drying.

I landed. She checked the sky for danger, then ran out to hug me. She still hadn’t found a new shoe to make up for the one she’d lost. Her right foot was a lot dirtier than it had been when I left. She was so cold that her freckles stood out against her tanned skin.

“I told everybody you weren’t dead.” She buried her face in my armpit and squeezed me. The soaked sundress skirt slapped my shins and tried to stick. Her sharp little body was nothing but skin and bones everywhere except her stomach. That felt like a smooth round stone poking out. “The moon would have told me if you were.”

I’d forgotten how dreamy Moonie’s voice was. Light. It sounded like she would drift away if the wind blew too hard.

“Nope.” I patted the top of her stringy wet hair. “Not dead.”

“Come on, let’s get out of the wide-open,” she said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me toward the trees. “Everyone will be bathing by now. Let’s go to the hot springs and show them you’re back.”

Back, I thought.

Not dead.

Still here.