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“Patience lied,” I say.

“This is the fate of every surrogate who has ever been Auctioned,” Raven says. “Childbirth kills us, if another royal House doesn’t get to us first. But for the first time in our history, the surrogates have a chance to do something about it.”

I reach out and touch Raven’s shoulder. “Put those away,” I say. “They understand.”

Tawny is blinking back tears. “But why? We help them. We give them babies. Why do they want to k-kill us?”

“Our deaths are merely a by-product,” I say. “A result of an unnatural pregnancy. We aren’t sure why bearing a royal child causes death. Maybe it’s the Auguries. Maybe it’s because we were never meant to carry children besides our own. Whatever it is, we are only a means to an end for them. They don’t see us as people at all. We have no names in the Jewel. Our opinions don’t matter.

“But,” I continue, “there are people in this city who want change. People who are risking their lives to fight the royalty’s hold over us. Why do they keep us separated by walls? Why do they dictate what we do with our lives, where we work, how much we earn? Why don’t we have a say in how we live?”

“And it’s not just the surrogates who get treated like they’re expendable,” Raven adds. “There’s a whole city out there that’s being oppressed.”

“Imagine what we might accomplish if we all worked together,” I say.

“Excuse me,” Henna says, raising her hand as if this is a class. “You said we finally have a chance to do something about this. But . . . we’re locked up in here, watched over by caretakers. The only power we have is the Auguries. I don’t see how changing the color of something is all that useful.”

“Let’s take them to the cliff,” a brunette named Sorrel says, tugging on Raven’s sleeve—she’s the youngest of all the girls in this group.

“Yes, the cliff,” Scarlet says eagerly.

“I can’t believe you knew about this and didn’t tell me,” Ginger says.

Scarlet looks sheepish. “I couldn’t; they made me promise! Once you go to the cliff, you’ll see—it’s really too dangerous to talk about. If anyone found out . . .”

“All right, enough talk,” I say. “It’s time to show you.”

Amber, Scarlet, and the other girls we’ve already shown the elements to quickly form a circle. Scarlet takes Ginger’s hand with an apologetic look.

“Don’t be too mad,” she says. “You’ll love it when you see it.”

Raven squeezes my fingers. I smile and close my eyes. I love going to the cliff.

It is a strange place, somewhere nebulous between the real world and a former Paladin stronghold. The Paladin were a race of warrior women, gifted with the use of the elements and charged with protecting this island. The royalty came in ships, claimed the island for their own, and killed all the Paladin.

Or so they thought. But the Paladin survived. We surrogates are their descendants. Lucien thinks it’s genetics that make some women (like me) have the ability to connect with the elements while others (like my mother) can’t. He believes it’s a recessive trait, like having blue eyes. Sil told him that’s crap, and not everything can be explained so easily.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. These girls before me are Paladin, and it’s time to show them what that means.

The cliff first appeared when I saved Raven’s life, after she miscarried. I don’t know what took me to that place, if it was fate or chance or pure love, but once I went there, I felt an instant connection with the elements, with my heritage. I understood myself and the world in a way I never had before.

That’s what we did with Sienna, and Indi, and Olive. That’s what we’ve done with all the girls in the facilities. Get Raven to them. Take them to the cliff.

A second after I close my eyes, I’m falling. I hear a faint shriek that I think is Tawny, but it’s okay, we’re already in a place where the sleeping occupants of Southgate can’t hear us.

It’s nighttime on the cliff, and raining. The weather here often reflects the weather in the real world. Or sometimes it reflects the surrogate’s own desire, like when we took Sienna, and it was snowing because Sienna loves the snow.

The drops of rain are warm and run down my cheeks in rivulets as I raise my face to the sky. The ocean stretches out below, and while I can barely see it in the darkness, I hear the waves crashing against the rocks. The trees that stretch out behind me rustle in the wind. And in the center of the cliff is the statue, a monument of blue-gray stone that leaps up in a spiral, a frozen wave reaching to the sky.

I’ve missed it here, I murmur in my mind.

Me too, Raven replies wordlessly.

Me three, Amber adds. Some of the girls who have been here before run off to do their favorite things. Azure dances under the trees. Sorrel gazes out over the cliff, listening raptly to the roar of the ocean. Ginger stands in a state of shock, Scarlet beside her still holding her hand. Tawny seems torn between fear and excitement.

Henna’s eyes are wide as she circles the statue, reaching out a cautious hand to touch it. I know what she’s feeling—stone that is impossibly smooth, like water made solid.

Then Henna begins to laugh. She holds her hands up to catch the raindrops, and I smile because she is ours now. She sees who she was meant to be.