Kit stiffened. “You don’t have to—”

“It’s alright,” said Anji. “I found my mother lying near the table, on her back. Dad was on the stairs to my loft. There was so much blood. I didn’t know bodies could hold so much of it, or lose so much. It was like someone had come in while I was gone and painted the floor red. They were both stabbed to death and,” she pressed a hand to her forehead, “pages of The Tide had been stuffed into their mouths.

“Someone must have found out what they’d been up to, who they were working with. An informant in the rebellion. One of the Wardens, maybe. I never found out. Anything not Senate-approved, newspapers, plays, songs—forbidden, of course, but an unregistered Maxia … tinkering with Senate secrets …

“My parents believed in a better life for us, for people like us. They were so smart, Kit. They could have done anything—could have made more money and gotten us out of that basement, but they believed in something, and Rolandrian had them murdered for it. I would have been murdered for it if I’d been there.

“I wanted him to feel the pain I felt, the loss I endured for six years. I wanted him to feel alone and terrified and helpless, because of what he did to my parents. To me.”

A thick silence stood between them, the horse nickered outside.

“I’m so sorry, Anji.”

Anji leaned her head against the cool stone. “Like you said, it didn’t do anything. Mostly I felt the same amount of awful and alone. The only thing that changed was I’d murdered someone, and that someone being gone won’t put food on anyone’s table. It won’t raise wages for a single factory worker. Laundresses will still be treated like prisoners. It didn’t save my parents. It won’t bring them back. My only friends in the world were tortured and killed. All because of me.

“Some part of me thought I would change things, that I would lead the revolution my parents dreamed about. The uprising they must have argued over and planned and spread. But that was only a shallow justification. I wanted to feel better, so I took the simplest path. I think if I really wanted to help, I would have searched for another way. A better way.” She buried her face in her hands. “And now it’s too late.”

“There is one,” said Kit, her voice cracking. “Another way.”

Anji listened then. Not out of deference, but because behind this woman’s bile was someone who’d been where Anji had: cold and alone and afraid. Orphaned, blood-stained, and without direction.