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But it doesn’t say Edana.

The word printed beside Mutt’s is Skata. A good name for a horse, hard and short. Skata is a local name for the magpie. A bird known for its cleverness, for its affection for shiny things, for its black-and-white coloration. There’s only one thing on that beach that’s black-and-white.

Skata is the piebald mare.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

SEAN

I find him by one of the bonfires.

The flames strive high into the black sky, tangled with the night. I can taste the smoke on my tongue.

“Matthew Malvern,” I say, and it comes out a snarl, a call to battle, no more friendly than one of Corr’s screams across the sand. Mutt is a giant, a mythical creature outlined in black before the bonfire, charcoal in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other: a sea wish. If he has a face, I cannot see it. I shout, “Is it a death wish you have written on that?”

Mutt twists the paper just long enough for me to see my name on it, written backward. Then he lets it fly over the edge of the cliff. It disappears into the black.

“That horse will kill you.”

Mutt swaggers up to me. His breath is dark, the underside of the sea. “And when, Sean Kendrick, have you ever cared for my safety?”

He stands closer, and closer, until our shadow is the same. I don’t flinch. If he means to fight tonight, I mean to fight him back. The storm’s inside me already and I can see Fundamental go under again, fresh as the minute it happened.

“It might not be you she kills,” I say. “And no one deserves to die because of you.”

The fire is hot on my skin.

“I know why you don’t want me on her.” Mutt laughs. “You know she’s faster than him.”

For so many years I have taken every precaution to keep Mutt alive for his father: put him on the safest horse I can manage, trained the hell out of that horse to make it impervious to the ocean, watched him in training to make sure that no one else interfered with him. I have two healed ribs that should be his.

Now he’s put himself so far outside my ability to protect him that it’s almost relieving. On the piebald, I can do nothing for him.

I put my hands up. “Do what you want. I’m done.”

I see figures at the corner of my eye; they’re here to bring us over for the riders’ parade. The night’s nearly over, and then the training really begins. It’s hard to imagine, right now, a day after this night, which seems like it could go on forever.

“Yes,” Mutt says, “you are.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

PUCK

The riders’ parade is not really a parade at all.

There’s a man calling over the crowd, “Riders? Riders! To the rock!” He clearly means for us to follow him. I keep waiting for it to sort itself out into something more organized, but it never does. The only time it looks anything like a parade, kind of, is when I spy a few of the riders all heading in the same direction, up to the cliff top. The crowd parts for them, and I hurry after them, Finn trailing as best he can. No one moves for me, however, so I get a mouthful of wayward shoulders and a rib cage full of elbows.

By now it’s blacker than black, and the only light comes from two bonfires, one burning high and furious, and the other smaller and spitting. I’m not certain where I should be.

“Kate Connolly,” someone says, not in a nice way. When I turn my head, I see nothing but eyes glancing away and eyebrows pulled together. It’s a strange thing, to be talked about instead of talked to.

A hand grabs my arm, and I turn, hissing and spitting, until I see that it’s Elizabeth, Dory Maud’s sister. Her hair is fair, even in this dim light, and she’s wearing a red frock the color of Father Mooneyham’s car. She makes a sour face. Her lips match Father Mooneyham’s car, too. I’m sort of surprised to see her here; I’ve never seen her outside of the booth or Fathom & Sons, and I thought, possibly, that she would melt or disintegrate if she crossed into the real world. Each of the sisters has her realm: Dory Maud’s is the widest, including the whole island, and then Elizabeth