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"And what happens when they find you on land?"

"I stop moving."

"You stop moving."

"If something runs, a predator notices it. Animals that stay still and choose their position carefully are easier to overlook."

"How much easier?"

"Enough that it's worth trying."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "That answer was suspiciously vague."

I looked at her.

For a moment she kept staring back, and then the humor left her face. "You don't have to prove anything, you know."

The words landed harder than I expected.

"I know."

"Do you?"

I looked down at my boot instead. The sock was visible through the split in the toe, and I'd pulled the laces so tight that they pressed into the leather.

"I know I can let somebody tie a red cord around my wrist the second I get scared," I said. "I know nobody would blame me for it. And I know everyone here already expects me to lose because I'm a Hollow." Tamsin's mouth tightened. "But I still want to try."

"Why?"

Because Delphine had called me Stray as if she'd decided it was my name. Because I'd spent twenty-two years learning how to take up less space before anyone could ask me to. Because something inside me had started pushing back against the certainty everyone else seemed to have that there was nothing in me worth noticing.

I wasn't ready to say any of that aloud.

"I'm not going to be Delphine Marrow's maid."

Tamsin stared at me with the apple halfway to her mouth.

"That is either extremely clever or deeply alarming."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"I'm beginning to figure that out about you."

She grinned, leaned toward the little stove beside my bed, and rubbed her thumb through the cold ash along its edge. Before I could stop her, she drew a gray streak across each of my cheekbones.

"There," she said. "Now you look like you might bite somebody."

We went back down the two hundred and twelve stairs together. At the bottom, just before the outer door, Tamsin caught my hand.

"I'll probably be in the river anyway," she said. "Occupational hazard of being an otter. So if you hear something splashing around with absolutely no dignity, that's me." Then her expression changed. "Oh, and Solace hunts tonight. All of them."

"So?"

"So nothing. I'm only saying that if a certain jaguar happens to catch you, there are worse outcomes."

"Tamsin."

"I'm just saying."