“You must be mad,” Linnet said. “Watching me, coming here, thinking I’m—oh, for goodness' sake—pretty.”

She stopped. Something clicked in her brain. She looked at the boy standing by the window, seeing the thick unfamiliar fabric of his clothes, the outlandish hairstyle. His eyes looked dark, but that was because the pupils were huge, twice as large as a normal human’s—black holes edged with a tiny rim of colourless iris.

“You’re from down there,” she said. “From the city. From the smog.”

He stood by the window, as if her words held him still, watching her with those incredible eyes. “I know I shouldn’t be here.”

“Up on this level, you mean? Are you—do your people not let you come this far?”

“No, it’s not them. It’s the guards, on the lower blocks. I know I shouldn’t have come past them. I shouldn’t be here with you.”

His gaze caught hers and held it. She felt her heart beating in long slow strokes that held her motionless.

“You know you’re guarded?” he said.

“I suppose. All the tower blocks…”

“Like princesses. All you girls—I see you, in your glass towers, your enchanted gardens. All sleek and swishy and plastic.” His lip curled, then his gaze came back to rest on her. “Not you, though. You’re different.”