Lazaros shot toward them. Ephyra rolled her eyes but dropped the proffered item into his hand. It was just a seashell, collected from the cove that the Archon Basileus’s residence perched over.

Once Lazaros was satisfied with his examination, he held it out to Beru. When she opened her palm, he pressed the shell into it. His touch was always cold, like Godfire. Beru suppressed a shiver and drew her hand away.

“Thank you,” she said to Ephyra, and went to put the shell with the others on the windowsill. “Come on, let’s sit.”

Together they returned to the fire, letting it warm their hands. A chill was beginning to take the air in Pallas Athos as the hot summer months turned over into fall.

Servants, holdovers from the Archon Basileus before his arrest, arrived a few minutes later with their supper—a stew of lamb, walnut, and pomegranate pillowed on a bed of saffron rice, with a jug of wine to wash it down.

Beru and Ephyra were both so used to surviving on scraps and living in hovels that they’d had to adjust to the newfound abundance of this place. There were other things to get used to, too. Like the soft, searching looks Ephyra sent her as they ate. Like the guilt gnawing at Beru’s heart as she tried not to think about the faces of all the people she’d tortured today.

There had been eighteen of them, more than usual. She didn’t want to think about what that meant—that Pallas’s message was spreading, that more and more people were taking up his cause, going out and finding Graced to capture and mutilate.

“I’m sorry,” Beru said suddenly, setting down her fork.

Ephyra touched the welt on her cheek. “Beru, I already told you—”

“Not about that,” Beru said. “Or—not just about that. I’m sorry that I never understood until now what it was like for you. All those years, killing people just to—I’m sorry.”

“Beru, that was never your fault,” Ephyra said, staring at her intently.

“I called you a monster,” Beru said, her throat heavy with tears.

Ephyra looked away. “Maybe I am one.”

“Then what does that make me?” Beru asked. “Those people today, in the temple … I’m a hypocrite. I blamed you for everything you did for me. But now that I’m in the same position—”

Ephyra clamped a hand down on Beru’s, a storm roiling in her dark eyes. “You could never be a monster. You’re my little sister. And we’ll—” She cut a quick glance at Lazaros, and Beru understood what she had stopped herself from saying.

We’ll find a way out of this.

“It’s going to be all right,” Ephyra said. She patted Beru’s hand with a wan smile.