We don’t have to tell Uln’s soul what to do.

She glides toward him, all fire, flying low under the cave’s ceiling. She presses against his stone feathers, looks into his unglimmering eye. She slips into him the way a hand slips into water. Soul and stone merge in a swirl of gold and exploding sky. Uln’s eyes remain black — black as mine, black as Bly’s — but they’re shimmer-filled now. And his feathers are soft, brittle only at the edges.

He’s alive.

They are alive.

“He’s not Uln anymore,” I say, turning to Bly, dizzy with what I’ve just seen. What I’ve just done. “Their name. It should be different. They’re — they’re Nightfall.”

“Nightfall.”

“From —”

“From the First Mother’s poem.”

We say the line in unison. “Stone bears down in daylight, but when nightfall comes, I know that I am flying.”

Mimm chirrs. Trick flaps her wings.

Nightfall cries out, then surges forward. The tips of their feathers gouge the walls of the cave. They lift their head and look at me, and in their eyes I can see that they know what to do. Find Linna. Be unquiet. Take us away from Blightsend’s cliffs. From Mr. Crowwith.

“Nightfall,” I say, stroking their smooth-stone beak. They push their head gently against my chest. Their feathers are bristling with life, but the tips are still unbreakable as stone.

“Shhh,” says Bly. “Listen.”

I prick my ears at the silence, gathering Mimm and Trick into my arms so that they don’t make a sound.

A voice echoes through the cave. Not my voice. Not Bly’s voice. Not Nightfall’s, either. Not a bird or a girl or a boy. A woman. “Delphernia. Delphernia. Delphernia.”

Trick tucks herself inside my jacket. Mimm lets out a whimper.

It’s a voice like an ax. A voice that still makes me bite the insides of my cheeks. I know it better than I know my own scars. I could never forget it. I’m all welt and wound. My thumb tingles.

It’s Mother Nine.