"Life's certainly not fair on the Frontier where I'm from," Mayerling says softly. There's many remarkable things about his world to other people, but there's still something about the way Manabu says the other planets I've been to like it's perfectly normal. Yes, some vampires left for deep space, but Mayerling knows from living in the City of the Night the call of the Earth.

"Other planets," he sighs softly. "This is the closest I've been to them, besides Trench."

He points upward.