He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. It smelled of the apple and the recycled air and a clean, childish sweetness that was the most precious thing he had ever known.

She was quiet for a long time. He could feel her thinking, the small pulse in her wrist fluttering against his thumb.

The question was so precise, so perfectly horrible in its childish logic, that Leo’s throat closed. He had been thinking of it as a monster. She had reduced it to its simplest truth. Hungry.

Today was the Day of the Unsealing. It was a holiday Elara had invented. On this day, the rules of the room bent. You could eat your dinner for breakfast. You could draw on the walls. And you could ask one question that the other had to answer completely truthfully.