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I turn around But he isn’t talking toto the real Bay, who has stopped in theat me as if she can’t believe what she sees

And I don’t believe h this is where I hoped I’d find her, though this is what I wantedI’ve done has been because I knew I had to see ain

CHAPTER 26

I want to say so and I can’t

I’m afraid she’ll leave the way she did the last tiain

That she’ll be angry with , because it isn’t safe forI hold on so tight She whispers intostory I don’t even knohere to begin Priests stare at us and the gods sit a the people in the pews and my mother and Maire are dead And the Above is not what I’ve been told it was all my life and I don’t care, I love it anyway, and I can’t live here I’m a siren and no one wants me to live anywhere

"Rio," Bay says, and I feel her sirl, tears in my hair, salt on ht of what’s happened and light with the relief of seeing e room at the back of the teoes to a closet at the back of the room and pulls out some old robes for us to wear over our still-da at , but I can’t believe how i, but I didn’t I forgot how she ot her profile when she’s turned three-quarters away frole is small and fine, like a shell I realize that I didn’t hold on to the exact color of her eyes

She’s cut her hair shorter, and her skin is tanned fro--I can see the muscles in them, even more defined than when she practiced in the lanes every day There are dark shadows under her eyes, the kind that speak of weeks without enough sleep, rather than one single harrowed night

Her voice still sounds gentle but also huskier--perhaps a result of breathing the air Above--and she’s taken on their accent Even so, I re I have reht, I realize Maire told the truth I do kno to listen

And then I finally say so

"Maire," I say I have to tell Bay what happened to Maire