“Delphernia!” calls Mother Nine.

Bly’s face is panicked. He smooths Nightfall’s black-bright feathers, as though he’s already thinking of losing everything. “You have to go outside and talk to her,” he says. “We can’t have her discovering —”

“You’re right,” I say. “I’ll go.”

But my feet have grown into the ground like roots.

I thought I was free of Mother Nine. The law says she’s not to leave the cloister — ever. She shouldn’t be here. But she is. Her voice is looping about the cave like a hungry spirit, making Nightfall cringe, making Bly sweat. The old scars on my hands darken and sting. Stay away, my body says. But Bly settles worried eyes on me.

“All right,” I say, “I’m going. I’m going.”

Mimm lifts into the air. I ease Trick out of my jacket and hand her to Bly.

And then I turn toward the sea.

Mother Nine stands among the stooped heads of boulder-giants. The sea is varnished with evening light. For the first time since I left the cloister, I feel as though its waters are not a threat. But Mother Nine makes me doubt. Her eyes are on me — reminding me that winter waves have a taste for girls with unruly throats.

I plant my boots on the damp-black beach. I tuck my fingers away and look straight at her face, as if I’m some kind of Sea-Singer.

“You need to listen to me.” She reaches out, but I move away.

“You hate me,” I say, fight still smoldering in my belly from when I sang Uln a soul. “Why should I listen to someone who hates me?”

Mother Nine knots her fingers. “You need to get out of here,” she says. “Sooner or later he’s going to find out that you can’t make shimmer. If the sea doesn’t take you itself, the Custodian will send you to the cliffs.”

I let the silence draw her closer to me, and then I whisper: “Bly already knows. I’ve sung for him, too. Now you can leave me alone. Find someone else to torture.”

But she doesn’t turn away.

She fiddles with her sleeve, checks the sea at her back as though it’s bound to hunt her. I realize all at once that she’s the one afraid of waves. Afraid of the world outside the cloister. She taught me to fear it because she fears it herself.

“Come back to the cloister with me,” she says. “I’ll get us away; that was always my —”

“Always your plan?” My laugh is a handful of scattered hushingstone shards.

I want to spit at her feet, spit out all the lies she ever told me. But I don’t. I bury them in the rush and stir of my heart, along with all my questions. I’ll turn them to truth with my blood and use them as weapons.

She reaches for my hand again. I snatch it away.

“All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be safe, Delphernia.”

“You don’t hurt people you want to keep safe,” I say, the end of my nose a spark, the corners of my eyes two tiny fires.

“Leave,” I whisper harshly. “I don’t need you anymore.” I clench my eyes closed.

“Delphernia,” she says. “If you make this the last time I see you, I need you to know. She is — she was — she was your mother. I need you to know that she loved you.”

Her words fill me with the sea’s gushing. Mother. My mother.

When I open my eyes, she’s put distance between us, weaving among boulders, her silks around her like dirty smoke. She used to seem so big. She used to take up the whole cloister. The whole world. But now she looks small and ragged. Wrinkled and tired, like a dress washed too many times with rough-scrubbing hands.

I run after her — which is exactly what she wants me to do.

But — mother. My mother.

The sea is singing. “Who was she?” I scream, running to keep the mud and feathers of her cloak in sight.

She stops, turns toward me, steps backward, stumbling, her hands two birds. “You won’t believe me,” she says.

“Tell me,” I demand, cheeks wet.

She looks at me, meets my eye for a long time. Then she swallows. “The Sea-Singer,” she says. “Her name was Sveglia Emm. I loved her. Like a daughter. She was so gifted. And her voice — I couldn’t bear to tell her to be quiet. She was your mother, Delphernia. She gave you that name. Delphernia. It means dolphin — a swimming thing from storybooks.”

“But —”

I’m not even sure what I’m going to say. But I want her to stop. To slow down. Mother Nine loved the Sea-Singer. The Sea-Singer loved me. The Sea-Singer gave me my name.

Sveglia Emm.

Sveglia Emm.

The singer trapped in Hiddenhall.

The Sea-Singer is alive. And the Sea-Singer is my mother. My mother is alive, singing the souls of birds deep underground.

But Mother Nine isn’t done. She paces back toward me, grips my arm. “There was a storm after she sang,” she cries. “That night. You and Bly were born in it. Twins. And then the sea took her — rose over the cliff and snaked its way through passages of stone to find her sleeping in her bed.” She glances out at the waves, quickly, like she doesn’t want to meet a stranger’s eyes. A stranger she’s dreamed of and feared her whole life.

“That’s a lie,” I say. “The sea didn’t take her — Mr. Crowwith did.”

Mother Nine ignores me. “After she died, Mr. Crowwith brought you to me. He told me what’d happened. Told me to raise you as a turnaway girl. And he told me to draw out all the new girls’ crying. But I couldn’t do it — not to you. I knew” — her voice breaks — “I knew she would have wanted me to love you. But I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it.”

Twins.

Bly.

Mother.

Questions.

Sveglia Emm.

I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it.

No, Mother Nine. You haven’t.

You haven’t. You haven’t. You haven’t.

Mother Nine grimaces at the sea again. “I beg you, Delphernia, come back to the cloister, and I will make a plan for us to leave this place — like I’ve always wanted.”

“Always wanted?” I say quietly, remembering the whisper-room, the circles she drew around me with her skirts, the missed suppers, my scar-angry palms, my thumbnail torn off and left on stone like an insect’s wing, the bruises, the bruises, the bruises.

“You were cruel to me,” I say. “I don’t understand. If you knew my mother, if you loved her, if you were supposed to love me —”

Mother Nine doesn’t utter a word. But she doesn’t need to. I know why she was cruel to me. She had loved the Sea-Singer. She’d been gentle with her. And the Sea-Singer had died. She knew that I would have a voice. She knew that I would use it. And she tried to beat it out of me. To keep me safe. Because she saw my mother in me. She saw my mother’s crying — my mother’s questions — in me.

“You named me Undersea,” I say. “Delphernia Undersea. Because you knew I would go to the waves when you didn’t draw the crying out of me.”

Mother Nine dips her chin like the good turnaway girl she is.

“I won’t go anywhere with you!” I scream, the loudness of my voice surprising even me. I unclasp my earring, pull the gold clear of the flesh, and throw it at her. It drops onto pebbled splits of stone. The sea will claim it.

“I’m a singer now,” I tell her, raising my head. “I’m not a turnaway girl anymore. I’m not turning away from anything. And I don’t belong to you — I never did. We only belong to those who love us.”

I imagine the Sea-Singer holding me in her arms, telling me to sing. I picture us beneath the ground. I picture putting my hand through the gash in that underground wall — squeezing her fingers.

“I belong to her,” I say. “I’ve always belonged to her.” I start to walk away, back toward Bly’s cave.

“Delphernia —”

“Good evening, Mother Nine,” I say.

“But, Delphernia —”

“What?”

She points.

My eyes follow her yellow-nailed finger along the beach’s stone, toward the higher ground of the city.

Under a dimming sky, Masters march in solemn lines, no stone-flutes sheathed at their hips. No jeering faces. They’re dressed in quiet-embroidered tunics and jackets, unbelled slippers on their feet. No headdresses. They are silent, even if their steps still make rhythms.

My whole body is steeped in cold. My heart grows wings and bangs at my ribs. “They’re going to the Festival of Queens,” I say. “Linna. I have to go. I have to go now.” I tear my eyes from the Masters’ procession.

But Mother Nine is gone.

I squint — there she is. Running back toward the cloister. Her sanctuary. Her home.

But it’s not my home anymore. The cloister in my heart has burned to cinders, and I’ll keep no more wings inside it. I turn back toward the mouth of Bly’s cave.

I have a friend to rescue. And a brother to meet.