Uhh… what?

  Zoë and Melody took seats across the fireplace from Natalie. Melody looked totally still, but Zoë could tell she was desperately restraining herself from asking the question burning in her heart. Probably for the best, too—we have no idea what we're going into here. Especially if she's… not Natalie? I still don't really know what to do with that.

  Natalie settled back into her chair, once again driving home how young she was. Her demeanour screamed older, but by any other measure, she was just thirteen. She wore a pair of simple pants and a shirt, enveloped by a dark green jacket. Like the room's decorations, it seemed totally at odds with the medieval feel of the castle. Besides which, if Zoë had to put it into words, it felt like a kid's impression of an old castle. The place wasn't exactly built for a siege, or in any strictly logical sense.

  She doesn't seem crazy… Mostly, anyway.

  "Rook invited us to come out here," said Zoë finally.

  Natalie nodded. "I built all this stuff, but… there's nobody here yet. I finally figured out how to live on my own, but that's… kinda lonely," she added reluctantly.

  There's the teenager I expected. Meanwhile, at Zoë's side, Melody looked like she might burst into tears. Zoë had to take the lead, at least for this conversation.

  "And you wanted us to…" she prompted.

  "Be here, I guess," said Natalie. She seemed as uncomfortable as Zoë felt. "I'm the queen here, but I can't really have a queendom with just six people. I thought, you know… if you were out here this whole time in the camp, maybe you would want to come and live up here. I already figured out how to build stuff, how to get food, keep warm, everything."

  Six people…? Zoë glanced at Melody, whose expression was etched with sympathy.

  "It'll be nice to have more people," Natalie went on. "I… I only really ever lived with adults, and mostly on my own. I want…"

  "You want friends," said Melody finally, nodding.

  "...Yeah," said Natalie.

  "You live out here all alone?" asked Zoë. Might as well try to get my own answers here. I'm still really unsure about this, but better to get as much information as I can while I can.

  "Not alone," said Natalie, gesturing to the wolf. "I've got Gwen, Percy, Scrappy, Rook, and Hector here."

  "Where is Hector, anyway?" asked Melody, glancing around as if she could have missed him in the empty throne room. "We followed him out of town."

  "He's starting to make lunch," said Natalie. "We're having a feast today. Because… you know, it's a big day."

  The coronation. Whatever the hell that means. This is so weird. When did we leave the real world? If Natalie didn't have totally normal clothes on, I'd think I went back in time or something.

  "Are you going to stay?" asked Natalie, just as Melody opened her mouth to say something else. "Oh… sorry. I haven't talked to anyone in a while. Besides Gwen, of course."

  "It's true, then?" asked Zoë. "You can talk to animals?"

  Natalie smiled. She turned to the wolf and spoke something—an incomprehensible stream of words in a sing-song lilt. The wolf flicked its head toward Natalie in response, before settling back down again. Natalie frowned and sat something else, and the wolf gave a faint growl. Finally, it stood and walked out of the room.

  "That was incredible!" said Melody excitedly. "Oh, I hope I can do that someday!"

  "I dunno how I do it," said Natalie, "so I don't think I could teach you."

  She shrugged. "I'm not awakened yet anyway."

  "...Isn't that all over now?" asked Natalie, glancing between them. "That's what Rook told me…"

  "Yeah," said Zoë. "There haven't been any since…" She trailed off.

  Since your dad was arrested. Since you knocked out electricity for all of us. Since you started building this thing. I wonder if she knows some people blame her for this. They've got their timelines wrong, but some people think her ritual is what stopped Grey-eyes from awakening people.

  And they already didn't like her 'cause of her father…

  "Will you stay?" asked Natalie again. She glanced out the window, across the lawn to the castle walls. "There's plenty of room. I made a lot of rooms in the castle, and Hector's cooking for a bunch. We were going to invite more, but…"

  "I don't know," said Zoë, before Melody could commit them to something they didn't really understand yet. "We don't know what this really means yet."

  Wait… is a kid really gonna understand what I meant there? I should rephrase that…

  Except, Natalie did seem to understand it. After a pause, during which Natalie seemed almost like she was arguing with herself, she gave Zoë a solemn nod. "There's already a room for you. Hector can show you where it is, and then you guys can decide together. Nobody should have to live somewhere they don't want to. If you want to go back, I can make sure you get there safe."

  "Thank you, Linnethea," said Melody politely. She stood up, hand in hand with Zoë. "What's for lunch?"

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  "A bunch of things," said Natalie. "I'll see you then." She turned back to look at the fire, and out of the corner of her eye, Zoë saw her fiddling with something, though she should quite make out what it was.

  They took their cue. Zoë and Melody turned to find Hector Peraza waiting by the door. Without a word, he led them back into the castle corridors, and only once they were several hall-lengths away did he finally speak.

  "I'm glad you came." He sounded a little upset, and a lot nervous. Zoë felt like laughing—here they were, two college kids suddenly under the umbrella of two of the most powerful people in the world, not to mention a special forces operative or whatever the hell Rook was, and they seemed like the scared party.

  "We were following you, actually," said Melody. "I mean, I think we were… Were you in the camp earlier?"

  "I was. I needed to get some cheese, since we can't exactly grow it here," said Hector. He smiled slightly. "A lot of her favorite foods have cheese."

  Okay, now that we're talking to an actual adult here… "So what's going on here?" asked Zoë. "Natalie's changed her name and is like… building a new home or something?"

  "A queendom," said Hector. "I don't… I don't pretend to understand it, but I don't really have anywhere else to go. The rest of this continent already made it clear they don't want me around…"

  "Where are you from?" asked Melody gently.

  "México," said Hector. "But my parents immigrated when I was twelve. The same age as when she lost everything," he added, looking vaguely over his shoulder back the direction they'd come.

  They kept moving through the long castle corridors. Zoë wondered if it was a trick of the many identical hallways or some other magic which made the castle seem much larger from inside than it should have been. She tried to feel out for a spell—as she'd done to see the forest maze when Melody wanted to try and find the Greywood—but there was just so much magic around them, Zoë couldn't really land on anything in particular. Not while they were walking, at least.

  "I was twelve too, when we moved from Venezuela," said Melody. She put a hand on Hector's arm. "Yo estaba muy asustada. Pero al final encontré un hogar."

  "Gracias," said Hector, smiling. "I found a home too. It was right over there," he added, pointing out one of the windows, where they could see the empty space of the town through the open gate. Zoë realized they'd somehow moved to the second floor, though she hadn't felt even the slightest incline of the floor. "Rallsburg was the first place where I really felt at home. It was the longest I'd ever stayed in one place."

  "Lo siento mucho," said Melody, sympathy thick in her voice. "That must have been so painful."

  "It's funny," said Hector—and Zoë didn't have a clue what he could find funny about all of that. "Rallsburg actually was different. I lost my store, I lost my home, but… I still had my friends. The town didn't hate me, didn't hate I was from México, they just hated magic. So, in a way, it was a huge improvement. It's why I wanted to come back."

  "And now you're back," said Melody, smiling. "You had a grocery store, right?"

  "Ah, mi amiga," said Hector. "The best supermercado in el Bosque de Olímpico!"

  Was there a single other grocery store in the Olympic Forest? wondered Zoë, but Melody spoke before the words made it to her mouth, to her relief. She responded in Spanish, and Hector in turn, and soon Zoë had lost track of the conversation entirely.

  Probably for the best, too—Hector had lost a lot in his life, and she wasn't exactly great at handling that. Zoë didn't want to be mean to anyone, but sometimes, her brain tried to be clever ahead of the empathy she'd only recently discovered. It was one of the reasons she'd never really connected with people properly.

  For a very long time, Zoë hadn't really had friends herself. She'd had acquaintances, people she liked to hang out with, even people she spent days and days with. Zoë even called them friends, but in truth, she hadn't really known what friendship was like until Melody came along.

  Melody was Zoë's first real friend, though their relationship didn't start out that way. More importantly, Melody taught her what friendship really meant. A friend wasn't just someone Zoë spent time with—a friend was someone she could trust, someone she could say anything to. She could be vulnerable around friends, a concept which took a long time to really sink in.

  Suddenly, when Zoë had a bad night, when she was lying awake in the dead hours, going through an emotional breakdown… she had support. She'd gone so long without, between her emotionally distant parents and the many "friends" she feared she'd lose if they saw her as anything less than the badass tough Zoë she put on as a front…

  The first time Zoë called Melody at two in the morning bonded them for life. Zoë hadn't known it then, or even a couple months later, but that night sealed the deal.

  She had a best friend.

  Didn't expect my best friend to turn into my first love though… that's definitely not on the friend agenda. Zoë finally emerged from her cocoon of reminiscing as the conversation shifted back to English. Melody had noticed they'd unconsciously swapped languages, and gently maneuvered them back into a language Zoë could actually understand.

  "And what was the name of this fabulous place?" she asked, smiling.

  "Just Hector's," said Hector with a shrug. "I couldn't afford a sign at first, and by the time I could, everyone already knew it. Neffie helped me make a sign with some fruit and bread on it, and we hung that over the entrance instead. I liked that more."

  "Since it could be for any language, English or Spanish," said Melody, nodding.

  "Or Turkish," said Zoë, finally reentering the conversation.

  "Or Turkish!" Meldy agreed without missing a beat. "I'm sure they have bananas in Turkey, right?"

  Zoë shrugged, but Hector answered, to her surprise. "They do! They shouldn't, since it's outside the normal climate bananas grow well, but when have we ever let climate stop us, hm?" He laughed. "Anyway, this is your room. Lunch will be in a few hours. We don't have clocks anymore, but one of us will come find you when it's time."

  Hector hesitated, glancing back the way they came. "If you want to leave, you can follow the strings to the front door."

  "The… strings?" asked Melody, looking around. There wasn't anything visible in the halls, beyond the rugs and the torches of course, as well as the doors lining the hallway they'd stopped in. "Am I missing something?"

  Zoë didn't see anything either, but she did have one advantage. Closing her eyes, she felt out with her essence… and there it was. A string of energy hung in midair, from which each torch drew its own power. If Zoë traced it back, she could tell it got stronger as it moved deeper into the castle, and weaker toward the exit.

  "Got it," said Zoë.

  Hector smiled. "You know, it took Rook more than a week to find the string. I'm impressed."

  Melody glanced between them, realization finally dawning on her. "Oh, is this a magic thing?"

  "Yeah, Mel." Zoë patted her arm. "Magic thing."

  "Oh… okay."

  Hector turned to leave. "If you need anything, follow the string to the other end. That's the kitchen!" he called over his shoulder as he receded into the distance, turning a corner and vanishing from sight. To Zoë's surprise, there was barely even a hint of an echo—bet this place would be deafening if they didn't have rugs everywhere.

  She turned to the room they'd been offered, but Melody seemed uncomfortable again, perhaps even upset. Zoë frowned. "You okay?"

  Melody perked up immediately. Her face lit up like usual. "Yeah! Come on!"

  Not hesitating a moment more, Melody pulled open the door, her other hand grasped tight to Zoë's. Inside, a wide double bed waited, with a window looking out over the empty courtyard. Torches flickered on the castle side wall, but as Zoë reached out to them, she found she could extinguish and relight them with only a tiny flick of her mind. The room was totally sparse otherwise, but with plenty of space they might use… if they chose to stay.