“He was joking again,” said Bree, but she nudged Crier in the way of humans, elbow to elbow. It felt like camaraderie, like the two of them were sharing something familiar and warm.

Crier dared to smile at Bree. She smiled back, a crook of the mouth, and Crier felt another door open inside her, revealing this newest room.

So Crier, Hook, and Bree woke the horses and rode, and everything started out all right.

The horses, weary, moved much slower than Crier would have, and were much more visible than a single Automa. Crier kept her ears pricked, kept scanning the darkness, the shore, the bluffs, the black water, for any sign that they’d been spotted, but she heard nothing, saw nothing, and the sand beneath the horses’ hooves turned coarser, darker, pebbles and broken shells, and the mile tripped by.

The Queen’s Cove was small—it wasn’t even marked on most maps of Lake Thea. In practice, it was small enough that Crier nearly rode right past the mouth of it, even though she’d been tracking in her head the distance they’d traveled. She tugged gently on the reins, wheeling her horse around, and waited until Hook and Bree caught up before leading them single file into the cove: through the bottleneck, where two cliffs of stone converged with only a narrow gap between them, creating an inlet.

When they passed through to the other side, Crier realized why this place was called the Queen’s Cove. Unlike the beach outside, the sand here was white as salt. The inlet was shaped like a keyhole, and standing here at the mouth, the dark water looked like a face, the white sand a crescent-moon crown, the black rocks beyond that a tangle of wild black hair.

Did you make it here, Leo?

Is this where you died?

Only distantly aware of Hook and Bree behind her, Crier slipped off her horse. The ground crunched beneath her boots. Not sand, then—crushed white shells. It was ridiculous that Crier felt like she was walking across a carpet of crushed bones. She studied the great black walls of the cove, trying to think like Leo. If she’d come here to escape a raid, to reunite with her family on a night when nowhere was safe, where would she go? Was there a cave, maybe? Some sort of hiding place in the rocks?

Suddenly, a scuffling noise. A tiny rain of pebbles from above.

No.

“What . . . ?” Hook hissed.

Time slowed. Crier turned around and it felt like she was moving through water instead of air; a surge of adrenaline had taken over, her mind leaping ahead. Hook and Bree hadn’t dismounted. They were still hovering at the mouth of the cove, watching Crier as if waiting for instruction, because she’d led them here—she’d led them here—and they were following her cues.

“Run,” said Crier.

She watched Hook’s eyes widen. The whites of his eyes in the dark.

There was a sudden pressure in her right shoulder, as if she’d been pinched by an invisible hand. She ignored it. She raced forward, closing the distance between her and her horse in a fraction of a second. She swung back up onto her horse, dug her heels in, “Run,” Hook and Bree seemed to realize what was happening, the bolt of a crossbow glanced off the rocks only a few feet from Hook’s head, “Run,” Crier kept saying, quiet and controlled, “Run, run.”