Serina looked out over the women, most of them dirty, exhausted, with soot-streaked faces and pursed mouths. Their defeat was palpable. Maris slumped against Helena’s shoulder. Ember stood at the rear of the crowd, hands clasped behind her back, her face stone. Fox kept shaking her head, her gaze fixed to the blackened ground. Serina focused on other familiar faces: Claw, the older woman from the Cave who’d introduced herself by telling Serina she’d clawed out a man’s eyes. Mirror, her spiky hair streaked with soot. Shard, one of their markswomen, and Tremor. No one returned Serina’s gaze.

“You know, when I got here,” Serina began, pitching her voice loud enough so everyone could hear, “one of the first things anyone called me was dead girl.” She glanced sidelong at Val, who had the grace to smile sheepishly. “And then Oracle called me iron. She told me strength was currency here. She told me I’d have to fight. I didn’t know anything about fighting.… I’d been taught my whole life to be soft and accommodating. Obedient. Submissive. Beautiful.” Serina swept her aching body into an exaggerated curtsy. A few eyes lifted, a few mouths quirked. “Well, I’m not beautiful anymore. Or submissive. Or obedient. Or accommodating. I’m not even iron, because iron is strong but brittle, unyielding. And sometimes you have to yield. Sometimes you have to adapt.”

She gestured to the destruction behind her. “Nero and Diego burned down the one place we felt safe. They killed our friends. They destroyed most of our weapons. And they alerted the Superior that something is wrong on this island. All of that is true, and it’s all bad. But. Nero, Diego—every single one of those guards paid with their lives. They’ll never leave Mount Ruin. We will. We still have weapons. We have a few firearms, yes, but we have ourselves too. We have our homemade knives and our spears and our fists and our strength. We have our currency. We have earned our way off this island. We have paid for our sins and the sins of the men who put us here. We have paid our dues.”

Serina’s voice hummed into the silence. No one was looking at the ground now.

“We’re going to set up our markswomen on the cliffs. We’re going to give them all the ammunition we’ve got. And the rest of us are going to wait at the head of the path, out of sight. When the bullets run out, it’ll be our turn.” She glanced once more at Val, her expression fierce. “Because I refuse to be a dead girl.”

A shout tore through the crowd.

“We are getting off this island!” Serina yelled.

A roar answered back.

“Let’s go,” Serina said to Anika and Val, who flanked her.

Anika nodded and added her voice. “We will take our due!”