It held, Crier feared, the secrets Kinok was looking for.

She felt around on the forest floor until she found a sliver of rock and, the movement familiar now, used it to prick her finger. A single drop of dark blood welled up.

Crier closed her eyes, took a calming breath, and pressed the tip of her finger to the red stone in the center of the locket. The stone with a tiny, ticking pulse.

With the next breath—

—she was soaked and freezing. She stood huddled among a small crowd on the deck of a fishing vessel, in the middle of the ocean. Clouds loomed heavy and dark above; torrential rain swept almost horizontally with the force of the wind. All around her, in every direction, the ocean was a roiling black expanse. Amid the throng of people, she spotted someone familiar: Leo.

Now, she moved closer, careful to keep her balance on the violent sway of the ship, and saw that Leo held a little girl whose face was hidden, buried in his chest, but Crier knew it had to be Clara. Ayla’s mother; the daughter Siena had abandoned in favor of her own inhuman creation, Yora.

Yora’s heart, Crier thought fiercely. She had no idea if this would work, but she had to try. Siena had Made this locket for a reason: to record history, memories. It was a tool. A beautiful, ingenious tool, but still a tool. And tools were made to be wielded.

Yora’s heart, she thought. She tried saying it aloud: “Yora’s heart! Show me Yora’s heart!”

Nothing happened. Her words were snatched away by the sea wind, the pounding rain. Then—

—flashes of memory, so quick she could barely follow—

A coastline coming into view, the ship docking. Golden sand, pale green water, dawn-colored sky.

A caravan through the jungle, wild and tangled, wildness like nothing she’d ever seen, everything green, mossy trees and a creek bed and plants with leaves the size of Crier’s torso, hanging vines, shafts of sunlight filtering through the canopy overhead, the air thick and humid, the air like steam.

Hills rippling with winter-yellow grass, glittering with morning frost. A cave, a quarry, a river cutting through a deep canyon.

Clara asking, asking, asking—where are we? What happened to Mama? Eventually, the questions—and the tears—fading away.

Clara, older now. Thirteen, maybe. A golden chain around her neck, glinting in the light of a hearth fire.

Clara, older still, belly swollen with child, laughing on the shores of a wide lake, the wind tossing her dark curls, but behind her the surface of the lake unnaturally calm, unrippled, reflecting the evening sky, a massive mirror.

Show me Yora’s heart.

Fire.

In the first few seconds Crier thought she’d been transported back to the very first memory: the burning city, the smoke-filled streets, the terrified humans white with ash. But then her vision cleared and she saw she was on the banks of that same lake, the entire sky a pale, sick orange, the sun a bloodshot eyeball half obscured by smoke.