Chapter 3

Pell took me to the tide-priest archives the next day.

Maud allowed it because she wanted me cooperative. She also sent two guards, a woman named Sera and a man who never spoke. They stood by the door while Pell pulled scrolls from shelves that rose three stories high. The archives smelled of dust and brine. The only light came from green-glass lamps that made everything look drowned.

"Here," Pell whispered. He spread a scroll across the table. It was a copy of the Bell's inscription, made before the cathedral flooded. The words were older than the tide-script I knew. Pell touched them with his stylus. "This part is not a blessing. It is a contract."

"A contract with who?"

"The sea. Or the thing under it." He glanced at the guards. "The Warden's vow binds the Grief to the Bell. The Bell is the cage. The Warden is the lock."

I thought of the golden eye. Of the voice that called me little minnow. Of my mother walking into the tide six years ago. "My mother was the lock."

"Yes."

"Then where is she now?"

Pell did not answer. His hands were shaking. He pulled another scroll from his satchel, smaller, hidden inside his sleeve. "This is a fragment from the Warden's records. Elin Callis. Your mother. She took the vow on the first day of high tide, six years ago. The record says she was not supposed to survive."

"But she did."

"The record says she became the Grief."

The room tilted again. I gripped the table. "That's not possible."

"The Bell is a cage," Pell said. "What do you think is inside it?"

I stared at the inscription. I am the lock, not the door. My mother's lullaby: The lock remembers the hand that turns it. The gold crack in my locket. The matching crack in the Bell. The voice that knew my childhood name.

"She's the leviathan," I said.

Pell nodded. "And Maud knows. She has always known. She wants to bind the Grief to her bloodline, but the vow requires Warden blood. Your blood. She used you as a key."

Sera stepped forward. "What are you two whispering about?"

"Translations," Pell said. His voice cracked.

She took the scroll from his hands. She looked at the old tide-script, then at Pell, then at me. She did not read it. She did not have to. She had been watching our faces.

"Arrest the priest," she said.

The silent guard seized Pell by the collar. Pell dropped his stylus. It rolled under the table. He looked at me with desperate eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I told her about the inscription. She has my mother."

They dragged him out. I stood alone in the archive, guards on either side, the truth burning in my chest. The Bell was not a throne. It was a prison. My mother was not dead. She was the monster in the water. And Maud had not chosen me to save the city. She had chosen me to replace the lock.

That night, high tide climbed the lower district. I heard the water slap against the palace walls. I heard the Bell hum through the stone, patient and deep. I hummed the lullaby back, and for one moment, I felt my mother's presence in the dark, listening.

Then the hum stopped. The city held its breath. Maud sent for me.