The first Star went dark while I was holding my breath. I was twenty feet down in the Hall of Lights, both hands out, trying to keep a ribbon of current from slipping through my fingers. It was my hatch day, the only birthday I have. The elders sat along the coral benches to watch me do what I did every year. I held the tide for as long as I could without letting the cold in. Iola had been sitting through these trials since I was a child. She brought a basket of sweet kelp and handed it round as though this were a theater, which, to her, it was. "Longer, Maris," Queen Oshara called. Her voice carried through the water like a bell. "The tide does not tire. Do not tire before it does." "The tide doesn't have to remember anything afterward," I said. Somebody laughed. It was Iola, my old nurse, who had pressed a hand over her mouth and was failing to hide it. In the middle of the hall, five Stars hung in a slow circle. Each was about the size of an apple and brighter than any lamp. Orin was blue, and he hummed whenever I borrowed his tide. Sable was black, the kind of black that looked like a hole in the water, and she never hummed at all. Cinder glowed red like a coal. Teal was green and fidgety. And Pell was white, my favorite, the one who flickered whenever I laughed. That day she flickered once, twice, and then she stopped. She didn't fade. She went out the way a candle does when someone pinches the wick. One moment there was white light on all our faces, and the next there was only blue and green and red, and a silence so complete that I heard my own pulse. "Pell?" I said. Orin stopped humming. I had time to think, absurdly, that Iola's basket of sweet kelp was still drifting where she'd dropped it. Then something struck the dome above us. It was a dull, heavy sound, like a bell being cracked from the outside. The sea glass overhead shuddered, and a long black line split across it. Through the crack came a net. It wasn't made of rope. It was chain, thick and black, and the moment it touched the water I tasted blood in my mouth. Iron. Every child of the deep learns to fear that taste. The Tidefolk guards shot upward with their spears, and where the chain brushed their skin, their scales smoked and curled. "Back!" Iola screamed. "Everyone back!" The net dropped over the circle of Stars like a hand closing around a handful of fireflies. It caught Pell's dead little body and dragged her up through the broken glass. She was gone before I understood what I was watching. Nobody moved. Even the guards stopped, spears half raised. A stunned hush hung over the hall, and I realized I was the only person in it who was still moving at all. I did the thing I had been forbidden to do anywhere except the practice pool. I called the ice. It came up from my ribs, where it always lives, a cold so sharp that it felt like swallowing a knife. It ran down my arms and out through my fingers. The water around me turned white. Frost raced along the chain, link after link, and the iron went brittle and began to crack. The chain snapped, and the net fell away from the other Stars. Orin and Cinder and Teal and Sable tumbled free, tiny and frightened. But Pell was still rising, caught in the part of the net that had already gone through the roof, pulled by something enormous that I couldn't see. I watched her last white spark vanish into the dark above. Then the price came due. It feels like a hand reaching inside my head and lifting something off a shelf. There's no pain, which is the cruel part. I turned to find Iola swimming toward me, her gray hair loose, her face wet with sea water or tears, and I did not know who she was. She was a stranger. A thin old woman with kind eyes was reaching for me, and I flinched. For three heartbeats I had no name for her at all. "Maris," she said. "Maris, it's me." Then it passed. Iola's face slid back into place and I knew her again, and I held on to her as if I had been drowning. But something else had gone. I could feel the empty space where it had been, a small cold hollow, and I could not tell what it was. That's the worst thing about the ice. You never know what you've lost until someone mentions it. "The Queen," a guard shouted. "The Queen is hurt!" I turned. Queen Oshara floated at the center of the hall with one arm raised, the skin of her forearm burned black from wrist to elbow. She had thrown herself between the net and the elders. She was ancient and tall and silver, with a crown of living coral, and I had never once seen her afraid. She was afraid now. I reached her first. She held out her good hand, and in it lay a single broken link of the chain. "Look at it," she said. It was cold and heavy. Stamped into the metal was a small mark, worn but clear. A crescent moon, resting on a crown. "I don't know it," I said. "No. You wouldn't." The Queen closed my fingers over the link. Behind her, the elders had begun to murmur and weep. "But I do. I have not seen that mark in twenty years. It belongs to the land. It belongs to Lativeran." "What do they want with Pell?" "I do not know. Not yet." She looked at the four Stars huddled against my shoulder, their lights shrinking. "But the circle is broken. Without Pell, the others will begin to fade, and when they fade, so does everything they protect. So do you." "Then we go after her. The guards can..." "Not the guards. You." The Queen's silver eyes held mine. "Tonight you go up, Maris. To the land." I laughed. It came out thin and wrong. "I've never even seen the land." "I know." She pressed my hand once, hard. "And child, hear me. Wherever you walk, whoever asks, you must never tell anyone your mother's name." "I don't know my mother's name." "No," said Queen Oshara quietly. "That was the point."

The Queen's chamber smelled of kelp salve and burned scales. Two healers wrapped her arm in wet green leaves while she sat very straight and refused to make a sound. I stood at the foot of her coral bed with the iron link in my fist. Iola was packing a bag behind me, folding things and unfolding them again, muttering to herself. Nobody else had been allowed in. "Sit," the Queen said. "I'd rather stand." "You would rather shout. Sit, and shout sitting down. It is more efficient." I sat. I did not shout, which I think surprised both of us. "You said I'm going to the land. You said it like it's a chore. Like fetching water." "It is more dangerous than fetching water." "Then tell me why. Tell me everything, because I've been asking for twenty years and I've had the same three answers. You found me. I was an egg. My parents are gone." "Those three answers were true." "They were not enough." "No." The healers finished their work and Oshara dismissed them with a flick of her fingers. When they were gone, she looked older than I had ever seen her. "Then here is a fourth. Your mother is not dead, as far as I know. She is a woman of the land, and she gave you part of her power before you were lost. The ice that lives in your ribs is hers. I do not know where she is. I have searched for twenty years." My mouth had gone dry. "She's alive." "Perhaps. I will not lie and tell you more than I know." "And my father?" "Is the reason I have kept you hidden." She raised her good hand before I could ask. "That is all I will say tonight. Names are dangerous. The woman who threw your egg into the sea, and the man who helped her, are still alive. If you knew too much, you would try to find them, and you would die." "You think I can't take care of myself?" "I think you are twenty and you have never been hit by anything harder than a practice current." Her tone was gentle, which made it worse. "Now listen, because I will say this once, and then you will have to carry it alone." She counted on her fingers. "You have six gifts. The first is your mother's ice. It is the strongest and it is the most dangerous. Each time you use it, it takes something from your mind. You have felt it. You will feel it again, and each time it will take a little more. "The other five come from the Stars. Orin gives you the tide, and his price is your breath. Sable gives you silence, and she takes your hearing for an hour. Cinder gives you heat, and he steals your sleep. Teal gives you current, and she takes your balance. Pell gave you light, and she took your sight, though only for a day or so." "Pell is gone." "Yes. And that is why you must go after her. A circle of five cannot hold with four. In thirty nights, perhaps less, the others will begin to dim, and what they hold inside you will start to leak out." She glanced at my chest. "Six gifts in one body is a miracle. It is held together by something called royal blood, though I will not say whose. When the Stars fade, that blood will have nothing to hold." I understood only half of it. I had grown up being told I was a strange, lucky girl. I had never been told I was a fragile one. "On land, your tide gifts will weaken. The air does not carry them well. Your ice will not weaken at all." The Queen paused. "That is what worries me." Iola came over with the pack. Inside were a wool coat the color of a storm, two pairs of dry socks, a small knife, and a leather purse of seed pearls. At the very bottom lay a shell about the size of my palm, round and silver, with a pearl set in its center. "A finding shell," said the Queen. "It will point toward Pell. It will also tell you if the Stars grow weaker. Do not lose it, and do not let anyone else hold it." "Why not?" "Because it is the only thing I have ever made that lets me see where you are." She said it softly. I decided not to think about it just then. We left through the Tide Door at the bottom of the east cliff, a narrow crack in the rock guarded by two old women with spears. Iola cried the whole way and pretended she wasn't. At the threshold, she pressed her forehead to mine. "Eat hot food," she said. "Don't trust anybody who offers you something free. And if you find your mother, tell her she owes me twenty years of worrying." "I will." "Maris." Her thin hands gripped my arms. "Whatever you forgot back in the hall, I am sorry." "It was probably nothing." "It was not nothing," Iola said, and then she let go. Before I stepped into the dark tunnel, four small lights drifted after me. Orin, Teal, Cinder, and Sable had followed me from the Hall, tiny and quiet, and settled against my collar like fireflies on a coat. The Queen had said nothing about that. I looked back, but she had already turned away. The tunnel climbed steeply. The water got colder, then thinner, then it simply stopped. I crawled out of the last of it on my hands and knees, coughing, my lungs burning with something I had never felt before. Air. It stung. It was dry and sharp and enormous. Above me, instead of coral and glass, stretched a gray sky that went on forever. I lay on a beach of black pebbles while a thin, cold light spread across the water, and I thought I might be sick. "Maris," a small voice said, right by my ear. It was Orin, barely louder than the wind. "Before we go any farther." "What?" "Ask her what we eat." I sat up. "What do you mean?" But he had gone silent. I turned my head and saw that where my hand had touched the pebbles, a ring of white frost had spread across the beach. It crawled out, wider and wider, until it reached the foam. Snow began to fall from a clear gray sky. Far down the shore, a wolf howled. Then another answered, then a dozen more. The sound rolled across the hills like a wave. And somewhere deep inside me, in a place I had never known was there, something that had been asleep my entire life lifted its head and howled back.

I learned three things about the land in the first hour. The ground does not move. Everyone is very loud. And bread costs money. Harrowmere sat in a bowl of gray hills at the edge of the eastern sea, a town of stone houses with steep roofs and smoke leaning out of every chimney. I came into it at dawn with my wool coat buttoned wrong and my shoes full of black sand. Nobody looked at me twice, which I took as a good sign until I realized it was because they were all looking at the sky. The snow had followed me from the beach. It was the middle of autumn, the old women muttered, and they had never seen such a thing. I felt guilty. I kept my hands in my pockets. The bakery was easy to find. I followed my nose, and then I stood in front of a window full of golden loaves, unable to move. In the sea, we eat kelp and fish and sweet pearl moss. I had never smelled anything as wonderful as warm bread. "Help you, miss?" The baker was a large woman with flour up to her elbows. She frowned at my coat. "Bread, please. That one." I held out a seed pearl from my purse, the smallest. "Will this do?" She took it between two fingers and went very quiet. "Where did you get this?" "It's mine." "A pearl like this would buy my whole shop." She glanced at the door, then back at me. "You're from the coast folk. You've got that look. And you've got the salt on you. Who sent you?" "Nobody sent me." That was true, but it felt like a lie. "I only want bread." "Hey, Mrs. Tolliver!" A boy slid across the doorway on a patch of ice and caught himself on the counter. He was maybe fourteen, all knees and elbows, with a wool hat pulled down over curly red hair. "Don't shout at her. She's from my aunt's village. She doesn't know about prices." "Tobias Reed, you don't have an aunt." "I've got several. Two coins for the loaf, and one for the milk, and I'll carry her bag." He turned to me and winked, quite unsubtly. "Give her your smallest pearl and Mrs. Tolliver gives you change in copper. Everybody wins." The baker looked between us. She sighed, wiped her hands and counted out six copper coins and a loaf of bread, fresh and hot and wrapped in paper. I was so grateful that I nearly cried. Outside, Tobias walked backward in front of me, grinning. "You're a terrible liar." "I didn't lie." "You said it was yours. Then you looked guilty. Wolves can smell guilt, you know. Half this town can. You should practice." He stuck out a hand. "Tob. I work the ferry in summer and run errands in winter, and I know everything. Ask me anything." "What are wolves?" He stared at me. Then he started to laugh, then realized I wasn't joking. "Where in the world are you from?" "Far away." I tore off a piece of bread. It was the best thing I had ever eaten. "Explain wolves." So he did, walking me down a street of closed shutters while the snow thickened. Lativeran, he explained, was a kingdom of wolf folk. Most people could shift into a wolf at will. The strong ones ruled, and the strongest of all were called Alphas. They led the packs, and the packs served the Crown, and the Crown lived in a city far to the north called Orrenhall. There was a king, and since the old queen had run off, there was a new one. "The old queen ran off?" "Twenty years ago. Left her baby behind, everybody says. Or her baby was a monster. Depends who you ask." He lowered his voice. "My granny says she was a dragon. That's why the old stories say the king's family can't stand the cold. There's a whole song about it." "A dragon," I said slowly. "Don't tell anyone I told you. Wardens put you in the stocks for singing that song." He nodded toward a wall at the end of the street. "Look. They've been putting these up since last night." A paper had been nailed to a post, already damp with snow. The top line was printed in thick black letters. REWARD. FIVE HUNDRED GOLD CROWNS FOR THE SEA THIEVES WHO STOLE THE CROWN'S STARLIGHT PEARL. Below it was a drawing of a white sphere in a silver chain. I knew that sphere. I had watched it laugh and flicker in the Hall of Lights for twenty years. Underneath the drawing, in smaller print, someone had written: The Queen urges all loyal subjects to report strangers from the coast. By order of Her Majesty, Queen Ilvane. "Stolen," I said. My voice was very flat. "Fancy thing, isn't it? Fell off a royal ship, they say, or was snatched by coast thieves. Nobody's seen it." Tob shrugged. "I think the Queen lost it herself and wants somebody to blame." The finding shell in my pocket grew warm against my thigh. I took it out under cover of my sleeve. The silver pearl at its center had turned, like a compass needle, toward the north. Not stolen, I thought. Taken. And whoever took her had the nerve to put up a reward. "I need somewhere to sleep," I said. "Tonight. And somewhere to listen." Tob considered me with new interest. "The Drowned Lantern. It's the loudest inn in the east, and the loudest place is always the best place to listen." He tugged his hat down. "Fair warning. It's full of wolves." It was. I counted forty before I stopped, big men and women in fur collars, packed around long tables with mugs the size of my head. The noise was extraordinary. A fiddle screeched in one corner. Someone had set fire to a tablecloth and was being cheered. When I walked through the door, three people near the fire stopped talking and turned their heads at the same moment. One of them, a lean woman with a gray braid, sniffed the air. "Salt," she murmured. "And something else. Cold. Like the smell before lightning." My stomach turned over. "Don't look," Tob whispered, gripping my sleeve. "Sit. Eat. Act boring." I sat. A bowl of stew appeared in front of me, and it was so hot and thick that I forgot to be afraid for nearly a minute. Then the front door flew open and cold air rushed through the room. Twelve men in gray cloaks stood in the doorway, each with a silver pin shaped like a wolf's head on his shoulder. The fiddle stopped. The tablecloth fire went out. A man walked in behind them. He was tall, in a long black coat with snow on the shoulders, and he moved like something that had never once needed to hurry. His hair was dark and cropped close. A pale scar ran from his jaw to his ear. He didn't look at the room. He didn't need to. Every head in it had already turned toward him. "Alpha Halvard," someone whispered. "Nobody leaves," said the man. His voice was quiet and level and it went through the room like a blade. "Search every floor." And the thing inside me, the thing that had howled that morning on the beach, lifted its head again, and I had a terrible, clear feeling that it knew him.