Her anger flagged, and in that moment her arm shot out. One hand caught Mako’s skull between thumb and forefinger, and began to squeeze. He gasped. She pressed harder: the Penitent knew the precise breaking tension of human bone, could stop before it shattered. He would not speak again with that too-familiar voice.

There it was again, Kai thought, drowning. She knew Mako. Knew his voice. Had since childhood.

And yet she recognized his voice in some other way—like a song she’d long forgotten.

That confused rifling through her mind for a fact she’d never known she knew, that wasn’t hers. That was the Penitent.

That was something she could hold, and hit.

Swift as a sea storm she followed that feeling back, destroying as she came.

The Penitent, stunned, released its grip. Mako set his hand on the Penitent’s chest. He stared into the crystals of her eyes.

Then his true eyes opened, and light poured forth.

*   *   *

Izza pried at the Penitent’s fingers with all her strength and no success. When the grip gave, she sprawled back on the beach. Mako swayed, but remained upright. He touched the Penitent.

And his eyes opened.

They were already open, but he seemed to have another pair of eyelids, opening sideways. Light shone from him. No. “Shone” wasn’t the right verb. There was a word in Talbeg her mother used when telling old stories in which people saw something they weren’t supposed to see and the sight burned through them, and they died or else wandered as blind oracles for the rest of their lives, scraping the edges of the truth they’d glimpsed. That word meant “shine” the way “torrent” meant “stream” or “batter” meant “push.”

So.

His eyes opened, and there was light, brief, blinding.

Through the raw red-pink afterimage, Izza saw Mako stagger. She caught him as he fell.

Behind, she heard a crash of stone, and tensed herself to die.

No killing blow came.

She turned to look.

The Penitent opened like a stone flower. Crystals lined the inside, glistening wet. Kai stood within. Thorns retreated from her skin. A long cut across her cheek, a drop of blood on her neck and at her wrist, suit torn and tattered, hair a black tangle, but Kai nonetheless. Izza’s pearl hung around her neck.

The Penitent opened for her, or flowed open around her. Her first foot touched the sand. Her second.

She wobbled, but did not fall.

Izza stared into her eyes. Had she changed already? And if so, how much?

Then Kai hugged Mako, and the old man hugged her, and laughed, and she tried to laugh, too, but coughed and said, gravelly as a twenty-year smoker: “What the hell was that?” And, hearing her own wrecked voice: “Sorry. I’ve been, um. Screaming.”