When the ash had settled and Ares had set Thalia's limp form gently upon the floor, when Hazard had leapt to his feet and pulled desperately at her, disbelief in his eyes, the first thing Howard had seen was this: three bats huddled in a corner; the vacant airspace above the Waterway; a white skeleton, gone before he had even moved.

And he had known that there was nothing he could do but hold the boy as he wept as he does now.

Hazard's face is wet and red from the ash. He shakes less now than he did before Howard sedated him. But still the loss is deep in his bones. It will be a long while before he walks steadily with it. They had had to physically pull him from Thalia's body. In that moment, Howard had understood why Mareth had knocked him unconscious when Pandora died. It had been the only way to make him know that there was nothing he could do. That he could have reached no further.

"You know, I lost my bond too," Howard says. Thalia and Hazard had not been bonds officially. But it is of no matter now. Thalia had dived into the water, and Hazard had put himself hands in front of a stinger's tail. If they are not bonds by words, they are by action. "Pandora was her name."

Hazard's voice is weak. He shifts against Howard. "What happened to her?"

"We were on the Waterway," Howard says. "She flew out over an island and was attacked by mites." It is the first time he is able to speak the words so clearly, so simply. Once, that would have frightened him. "They killed her."

Hazard sniffles softly. "Couldn't you help her?"

"No. I wanted to. Even when she was lost I still wanted to." So badly he had wanted to fling himself from the boat, to drive his sword through the miniscule bodies of the mites. Lay himself onto her bones, to shield her with his last breath. "But there was nothing I could do. Nothing but cry, just like you are crying now."

Hazard had screamed and cried. No! You can't take her! I won't let you! As if his grip on her dead body would keep her in this life. And Howard had known exactly what it was like.

"What was she like?"

Once, he could barely speak her name without his voice breaking. Much less envision the person she was. Only in his dreams she flew freely. "Funny. And curious. She always had to be the first one to see something new." Howard smiles. "And she loved to eat shellfish. Great piles of them."

When he had met her, he could barely stomach shellfish. Chasing the meat about his mouth, taking great efforts to wash the taste from his gums. I am certain I can still feel it swimming about my stomach, he had told her. But she had laughed and made him eat enough on every possible occasion that he could not help but come to like them. When she had died, he had returned to the beginning. The very taste only brought memories of her laughing, and then her skeleton falling from the air.

Hazard's voice is so quiet now. He must be so very tired. "You're not crying about her now."

"No." He is not. He eats shellfish with gusto again. Not piles of them. But enough. "I have become used to carrying her in my heart."

She had been his bond — his second half — the person he should surely have died side by side with.

"My heart is so crowded already," whispers Hazard. His body has stilled. "But I'm sure the others will make room for Thalia. She is not a very big bat."

Quiet tears spill from his shutting eyes.