I run hard through Blightsend’s streets, the sun painting stone with a sheen of gold, the cloisterwings’ shadows flanking me. My heart is split down the center, but it pushes me onward, onward, against a threatening wail of wind.

To the cave. Bly’s cave.

The streets are narrow and empty, bright as needles, and I can’t rinse my thoughts of Linna’s face. Linna — handing herself over. Trading herself for me. And that voice behind the wall. Sveglia Emm. The name curls its script in my stomach like a prickly vine.

The only thing I can do is beg for help. Tell Bly about Mr. Crowwith’s plan to rid the island of music. Bly’s an odd boy, but he is the Prince of Blightsend. That must mean something.

I keep running, running along the beach of hushingstone pebbles, until I get to the screaming mouth in the side of the cliff.

Linna’s pale eyes and the strange letters of Sveglia’s name push me forward like hurried hands. The cloisterwings fly close at my cheeks.

I can’t see Bly. The lamps aren’t lit. But I push on until I get to a wall, to the back of the cave, resting my palms against it — then I remember the groan and I push away, stumbling.

But there’s no movement. No light. The crashing sea beats against the beach, nearing and nearing, come to grab at my wrist.

Girls with singing throats are swallowed by the sea.

Girls with singing throats are swallowed by the sea.

I’m listening for that sound of hurting. I’m waiting for a monster to burst from stone. I’m scanning the darkness, too, for one little nick of light. But my golden bird is gone. My heart thuds out a mourning, and I clutch at Mimm and Trick, bring them to my chest.

I sit, my legs folded beneath me. A sob escapes my mouth — a small-squeezed sound.

And I remember what it was to let my voice unfold in an unseen place, with only cloisterwings to listen.

The dark wreathes around me, and I fill my mouth with it. And I am the girl in the hollow tree. The girl who makes birds lambent as stars. The girl who doesn’t yet know how hard it is to be free.

My singing is a legion of glowing ribbons. I press each one between my palms until it becomes a beak, an eye, a feather. My tongue is like melted sap in my mouth. Golden birds dry my tears with their wings. The cloisterwings huddle against me, burrowing into my jacket. I’m home. This is the only home I’ll ever have: these birds, these songs. The air shimmers with speckles.

And then I hear boots scraping the ground.

I stand. “Bly?” I call.

My gold-whorling birds flutter their light over a face — dark eyes, brown skin.

And then he speaks. “I knew it,” says Bly. “I knew you were the one who made them.”