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She stops when we're far enough from camp that our voices won't carry.

I stop beside her and wait.

“You see.” She lifts her chin toward the lighthouse. “The light. Before dark.”

“Yes,” I say. “One flash. Then nothing.”

She shakes her head, a quick sharp movement. “Not me.” She taps her own chest once. “Not Meg.”

My eyes widen at the sound of her name.

Meg.

“Then who,” I press.

She's quiet for a moment. Crouched at the edge of the path with the cliff dropping away somewhere below us in the dark, the sound of violent water rising from the black beneath. Her eyes stay fixed on the lighthouse shape against the heavy sky.

“She don't know,” Meg explains. “What she doing. She don't know much.” A pause, searching for the word. “Anything. She don't know anything. Not now.”

The cold that moves through me isn't from the night air.

A footstep behind me. I spin, hand raised.

Cinder holds both hands up, her glass mask catching the dark. “Couldn't sleep either,” she says simply, and moves to stand beside me without apology.

Meg looks at her. Then back at me. Something in her expression settles, like she was expecting this, like she's been expecting all of it and has simply been waiting for us to catch up.

“Tell us,” I say.

Meg rocks slightly on her haunches, thinking. Choosing.

“Vale people,” she says. “Thorn Vale. They find her.” She holds up three fingers, then folds them down one by one. “Three week. On the rocks. East rocks.” She points toward the cliff. “Boat gone. Nothing with her. Just her.”

“Another heir,” Cinder murmurs quietly.

Meg looks at her. Nods once, hard.

“She sick when they find.” Meg presses a fist to her own stomach. “Already sick. Inside sick. They don't know what.” She shakes her head slowly. “Still don't know.”

I feel it before I understand it. The recognition. The specific shape of it.

“The same as my father,” I breathe out.

Meg's violet eyes find mine and hold them. In them is the confirmation I didn't want.

“Same hand,” she says. “Same—” She stops. Searches. Presses her fingers together like she's trying to pinch the word out of the air. “Same way. How it go in.” She mimes something slow and deliberate, a drop at a time. “But faster. This one faster.”

“She was poisoned before they put her on the boat,” Cinder says.

“She dying when she come.” Meg reaches into the folds of her clothing and produces something small. Dark glass, stoppered with wax, no light catching the liquid inside. She holds it out toward me. “This slow it. Don't fix. But slow.” She touches her own temple. “Bring her back. Up here. So she know where she is. Who she is.”

I take the vial. The glass is cold against my palm.

“Thorn Vale,” Meg continues, and something in her fractured cadence shifts into something more careful now, more deliberate, like this part matters most. “They keep her. Find her, so she theirs. They think.” A short pause. “They watch her go down for three week and can't stop it and—” She makes a sound in her throat that isn't a word. A frustrated sound. “Scared. They scared. Won't say but scared.”

“So we bring the cure,” Cinder states. “And they let us in.”

Meg looks at her. The closest thing to a smile I've seen from her moves across her face and disappears.