Kai read the flyer twice. The block was voting for its best boyfriend, and the winner would earn a public introduction at Block Party Hall. Kai didn't care about the prize. He cared that his brother had last been seen here, and the people who might have seen him watched newcomers close. He had spent fifteen years guarding strangers. Now he had to win one over. The teal compass on his forearm had no needle. He had come here without a direction and found a contest instead. The trouble was simple. Kai didn't know what these people wanted a good man to be. Guess wrong and he'd be the cold outsider forever, and no one talks to a cold outsider. He needed a rule to follow, and he had none. A woman in a red polka-dot dress set a table on the lawn outside the Hall. She smoothed the cloth before she looked up. This was Ruby, who was building a supper club nearby and measured every room by how quiet it made people. "You're the one nobody can read," she said. "Sit, sugar. Let me feed you." Kai sat. A relic hunter dropped into the chair across from him, boots dusty, dark hair loose. Emily had come off a dig and clearly didn't plan to charm anyone. "They want a show," she said flatly. "Flowers. Speeches. Somebody dancing." She tore a roll in half. "I'd hate it." "So what wins?" Kai asked. Emily chewed. "Somebody who actually helps someone. Not the act of it." A man landed hard at the edge of the lawn. Black wings, one hanging wrong, the feathers cut short on one side. This was the Blood Moon Sovereign, who never named the people who clipped him and remembered every face. A child near the fountain had wandered too close to a startled snail-riding gnome, and the small red-hatted rider tipped, cart and shell sliding toward the water. Everyone watched the winged man. Nobody moved. Kai moved. He crossed the lawn, caught the child's collar, and steadied the toppling shell with his boot. The gnome righted himself and tipped his hat. The child laughed. It took four seconds. Kai didn't perform it. His body just did the thing it had always done. The Sovereign studied him. "You didn't check who was watching," he said. "Most do." "Wasn't thinking about that." "I know." The Sovereign turned away. "That's rarer than the contest deserves." Ruby set a plate in front of Kai's empty chair, then looked at the crowd. They were murmuring now, pointing at him, not away. Ruby smiled. "That's your answer, sugar. You don't guess what they want. You do what you already are, in front of them." Kai looked at the flyer again. He knew how to win now. But the vote wasn't private. The whole block had seen his instinct, and one of them was watching too closely, taking notes on how a bodyguard moves.