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I pull him closer, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Keep you right here and do absolutely fucking nothing.”

Jade slips both arms around me and squeezes tight. “But you already have me, Halcyon.”

So I do. I hold him as the rain falls around us, soaking through our clothes, his face tucked against my neck, his body warm against mine. Beyond the silverleaf trees, the moons hang pale in the midnight sky, their light catching the wet stones.

Eventually, I press my mouth to his wet hair. “All right. That was it. The birthday’s over.”

He lifts his head. “Was it a good one?”

“The last six minutes were.” I kiss the inside of his wrist, right over the mark my belt left, feeling him shiver. “Come on, then, puppy. Let’s go home.”

EPILOGUE

JADE

There are fingerprints all over the orchard case.

A school came through this morning, forty-eight nine-year-olds from the eastern block, and the woman at the desk let them stay past their hour because it was raining. By the time they left, there were handprints at child height along every pane in the second room. Nobody’s cleaned them off. I told them not to, because every time I look at them, something warm settles behind my ribs.

I’ve been coming to this museum since I was small. Onyx and I spent hours in these rooms looking at pictures of a Calder neither of us had ever seen, back when there were orchards instead of dust and people grew things in the ground instead of digging beneath it.

Ash bought the building eleven months ago. He put the papers in front of me, said make it ours, and hasn’t questioned a single decision I’ve made since. The old galleries have stayed exactly as they were, even when everybody said we should modernize them, because I wanted the place I grew up with to still be here beneath whatever came next. Ash listened to me explain that once and never asked again.

“They’ve kept the museum free.” Mrs. Varga has hold of my sleeve, and she’s said some version of it three times in twenty minutes. “Not a credit to get through the door, can you believe it? They put out one of those donation boxes, but that husband of yours had it taken away the same afternoon.”

“He did.”

“I asked him why, you know. I told him people wouldn’t mind putting in a credit or two if it helped keep the place running.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said it wasn’t his museum to charge people for.” She smiles, completely oblivious to the fact that it’s mine. Then her eyes go wet. “I hope you get everything, love. All of it. You and him both.”

Somebody has brought chairs up from the transit hall. Widow Okafor has put her bag down on the seed-drawing case and nobody has the heart to tell her not to, while Ferro is standing in the second room in a tie, hands behind his back, studying the hand tools like there’ll be questions afterwards.

I drift over to the window and look out across the grass to the six young trees moving in the wind where the old service yard used to be. Children race between them every morning before school, cutting straight across the lawn because nobody has ever told them not to.

Down in the transit hall they’ve strung lights the whole length of the platform. The tram’s been stopped since three, tables running along the tiles with food on them and two hundred people down there who have no idea whose wedding this is and are having a wonderful time regardless.

Ash comes up behind me with two glasses, pressing a kiss into my hair before putting one into my hand. “Hi, puppy. Who’s the man by the door?”

I follow his gaze. “Which one?”

“The one who’s had four plates of food.”

“Oh, that’s Tovak.”

“Tovak.” Ash takes a slow sip from his glass. “And is Tovak a friend of yours, Jade?”

“No, I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

He looks at me. Then he looks back at Tovak, who is apparently going in for a fifth plate, and starts laughing.

“I might have put up a sign yesterday,” I admit. “About thirty of these people are actually ours. The rest came because somebody promised them a hot meal.”

Ash laughs harder, shaking his head as he takes my glass and sets both of them down on the seed-drawing case beside Widow Okafor’s bag. “Your soul is entirely too good for this world, stormbird.”

“And yet you keep me here.”