Sybilla couldn’t have been much older than Rosa—fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.

As he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.

“Sir,” the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. “Come away. Now.”

Jess jumped and turned and followed her away. “Wait,” he said. “What happened to her? The girl in the bed?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Wait.” Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. “What happened?”

She looked away all too quickly. “I told you, I can’t discuss it.” But she hadn’t pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, “She took poison. She’s not the first.”

He kept his voice as low as hers. “Why?”

“Not everyone is happy with their fate,” she said, and then did pull away. “Or suited to it. You should go. Now.”

Jess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.

I won’t let it happen to you, he told her. Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to see you like Sybilla.

He walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn’t look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs down. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.

Jess followed quietly and at a distance.

She descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.

Then she sighed. “Oh, Jess. Please go away.” Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.

“For what?”

“For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.” He hesitated for a second. “Your friend. Will she live?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “And that’s almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can’t bear that. Yet she’ll have to somehow.”

“Is he so bad? Her match?”

“No. Iskander is perfectly fine. But Sybilla . . . she was in love with someone else.”

“Who?”

Morgan turned and put her hand on his cheek. The contact was sweet and warm and unexpected, and he resisted the urge to put his arms around her.

And then she said, “Me.”