“You drank heartstone,” Crier said.

“I’ve grown accustomed to the taste, though it gives me the strangest dreams.”

“Was your father secretly a human too?”

“No. Father was an Automa. But he loved humans. Not like your father claims to love us, but like you do. Like I do. For everything we are, everything we aren’t, everything we can become.” She tilted her head back, baring her throat. “For our love. Our fury. For what we create: stories and cities and every last god. For our ghosts. For our drinking songs. Because . . . for every human who does a monstrous thing, a thousand others will rise against them. We have always killed and saved ourselves. Protected each other. Fought for futures we will not live to see. My father loved humans, Crier. When he was newbuilt, he met a human girl, the daughter of one of the Midwives. They remained friends for years and years, even though she was no one and he was destined to be king. When she fell pregnant by a man she wouldn’t name, my father gave her coffers of gold. When she left the newborn with the physician and disappeared overnight, he raised the child as his own.” Her eyes were closed, her hair a spill of pale gold down her back. “He kept me a secret from everyone but a handful of advisers until I was older. Until I knew how to hide in plain sight.”

“But you still snuck out of the palace.”

“That I did. I was lonely, you see. In my room, with my books. I wanted to meet my own Kind.”

“And did you?” Crier asked.

“Yes,” said Queen Junn, eyes sliding open again, the light brown of fallen leaves. “Many of them. I used a fake name, stole through the city, drank my fill of wine. Early on, I met a boy. I told him I was lonely. He said he knew loneliness down to the bone. He said he’d find a way to keep me company even when I returned to the palace, and he did.” Lips stained red with her own blood, smiling at the moon. “He wrote me letters.”

Love letters. Crier thought of the many letters she’d drafted and never sent to Ayla. She thought of love, a creature that took infinite forms, and marveled that her Kind had ever sought to be rid of it. Had taken something hot and true and replaced it with cold, loveless bonds, same as they’d taken lifeblood from the humans in the Iron Heart and transmuted it to crystal, crushed it, drank it like nasty wine. Crier had not imbibed any heartstone since she’d learned the truth about the Iron Heart, and now, under the stars, beside a young, ruthless, human queen, she vowed to never take it again. She would find Tourmaline and survive like that, or she would not. Either way, she wasn’t touching heartstone. Better for her body to wither than her soul. “Are you still lonely?” Crier asked, without really meaning to. “Even after everything? Even now that you can leave the palace?”