Miriam leaned forward. She seemed radiantly beautiful, in that moment, and also fragile—as if she might scatter into light and wind. Her mother, the queen. The mother who always made tomato soup by swirling in cream cheese, who liked to listen to jazz on rainy days and wade through old flea markets with her sleeves rolled up, as if she were in a swamp, catching frogs. Who liked American cheese sandwiches on white bread, and couldn’t stand apples unless they were baked into pie.

“Remember that story I told you, about the pregnant woman who was very sick? She was dreaming. She dreamed of another woman and another baby, but healthy.”

Dea nodded. She did remember: it was a fairy tale her mother had always told her. At least, she’d always assumed it was a fairy tale, although she’d never been able to find it in any books. She no longer recalled the details: just that a pregnant woman was asleep in the hospital, and she dreamed of another woman, and when she woke up she found that she had given birth to a baby with eyes the color of ice.

Like hers.

And suddenly the knowledge was there, gathering like a wave just beyond her consciousness.

Miriam’s voice was barely a whisper. “That’s how I did it,” she said. “Before I knew what I was doing—without even thinking about what it would mean—I escaped.”

“You didn’t,” Dea choked out. It was over; the wave crashed. A tide of nausea rolled up from Dea’s stomach to her throat.

“It was too late for them, anyway,” Miriam said, as though that made it better.

A dying woman. Her mom had taken the body of a dying woman and her dying baby. That’s how she had made Dea: from someone else’s bones and skin.

Dea stood up. She needed air. She couldn’t breathe. She stumbled to the window and leaned out, retching and coughing, tears burning her eyes. But nothing came up. The sickness was lodged inside of her.

“I had to,” Miriam said. She was talking quickly now, trying to get Dea to listen, to understand. “It was our only chance at life away from here.” She added more quietly: “Your father and I . . . well. We weren’t happy.”

“You—what?” All of this—everything her mother was describing, everything she’d done—because her mom wasn’t happy?

Miriam seemed to realize she’d misspoken. “There are no seasons here,” she said hurriedly. “Only the direction of the wind. Spring can come for a thousand years or not at all. What is born doesn’t always die.” Her mother paused, and added more quietly, “I wanted to know seasons, and order, and rules. I wanted to be . . . free. I wanted you to be free.”

Dea took a deep breath. Below her, the city shimmered in the late afternoon sun: crowded and irregular, improbably huge, like litter spit up over an eternity by an endless ocean. She tried to understand the meaning of Miriam’s words: a world both of permanence and of ever-shifting rules, subtle changes and subterfuge. It must be exhausting, like eternally navigating ever-changing currents, trying to stay afloat.

But her mother had done terrible things, and Dea couldn’t understand that.

“You stole money,” Dea said. She turned around, surprised that her voice remained steady. “You hurt people.”

Miriam winced. Had she really thought Dea wouldn’t find out? “I did what I had to do.”

“No.” Another thought occurred to Dea—scarier, even, than the knowledge of what her mother had done. “You did what you wanted to do. You did what you felt like.”

Miriam frowned. But she didn’t deny it, and Dea knew that she was right. She felt the way she had when, after standing on line to meet Santa Claus at the mall in Florida, they’d emerged into the parking lot fifteen minutes later to see him standing between two Dumpsters, smoking a cigarette, his beard yanked hastily to the side.

Her mom just did things. Not for any great reason, not because she had noble goals or beliefs. Just because. She’d wanted to run and so she ran. When she needed money, she’d taken it.

“I kept you safe for so many years,” Miriam said. Her voice had turned desperate, wheedling, like a salesperson trying to off-load a subpar vacuum cleaner. “That’s why all the rules. The mirrors and the clocks . . . time is the enemy of dreams. Dreams are allergic to order. I was hoping I could keep your father away. That’s why I was always running, too. I didn’t want to give him the chance to . . .” She broke off. “I know it was hard for you.”

“It was awful,” Dea said, but without anger. All the feeling had left her at once, had simply drained away, leaving her numb. She knew the truth now, at least. She was a monster. “It was wrong.”

Again, Miriam frowned. “Wrong, right.” She waved a hand. “People in the other world obsess about the difference. The truth is more complicated.”

“The other world?” Dea repeated. She nearly laughed. “That’s my world. Or it was, until today.”

For a moment, Miriam was quiet. Dea turned back to the window. She watched the light sliding between the buildings, leaving long shadows in its wake. She could just make out the silhouette of distant peaks—either mountains, or more buildings.

“I’m sorry,” Miriam said at last. “I did my best. And in the end, it didn’t matter, did it? He found us anyway. I don’t know how.” There was a rustling as she stood. “Two of his soldiers came looking for you. I let them take me instead. I was hoping that once he had me back, I could convince him to leave you alone.”

Dea gripped the windowsill. “It was my fault,” she said, her tongue tripping a little on the words. But what did it matter anymore? She’d broken the rules, sure. But what her mother had done was far worse. “I walked my friend’s dream. More than once. And then . . . I was seen. By Connor—my friend. And then the men with no faces came, and they followed me out of his dream, and everyone thought I was crazy. But I wasn’t—I’m not. They followed me.”

Miriam put her hands on Dea’s shoulders, forcing Dea to turn and face her. Dea tried to ignore the way the vines around her mother’s wrists shifted slightly. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “They would have found us eventually. There are as many monsters as there are people to dream them. That’s why your father’s so powerful. There are always more soldiers for his army. Even if they’re killed, or defeated, more will come.”

“But . . . but they can be defeated?” Dea said. “They can be killed?”

Miriam shrugged. “The strength of the monsters is in their numbers. Individually, they’re not difficult to defeat.”

“How?” Dea thought of the men and their wet, sucking breathing, the ragged dark holes where their mouths should be, and the way they reached for her with long fingers. It didn’t seem possible that they could be vulnerable.

Miriam smiled faintly. “The monsters come from people’s nightmares,” she said. “From their fears and anxieties, from all the things they don’t like to think about. That’s where their power is. That’s what makes them so effective in the king’s army. They feed on fear.”

“But . . .” Dea shook her head. She thought of the men with no faces: what they meant to Connor, what they represented. The way they transformed the air around them, freezing it, as if the whole world was stilled by terror. “How can I stop being afraid?”

“Pull out their teeth if they bite,” Miriam said, and for a moment Dea felt as if she were looking at a stranger. “Blind them if they have a hundred eyes. Give them faces, if they have none. Then, they’ll just be men.”

Dea had a thousand more questions—about the monsters, about her father, about his army, and the war he had said was coming. About her monstrous birth, into the body of a dying child. About stupid stuff, like all the little scams her mom had run. But she found she couldn’t ask a single one. She was so tired, she could barely think. “He says I have to decide,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to say the king. She definitely couldn’t say my father. “He says he’ll give me twenty-four hours.”