These men, all the people on this platform, would let the soldiers do whatever they wanted. After all, the soldiers were the Superior’s men. They carried his power in their hands.

“Her name is Talia,” her father said softly. “We are on our way to Silver City to visit her uncle, who is ill.”

“Well, now you’re on your way to Bellaqua. Isn’t that nice?” The soldier pulled the girl toward a bench and sat her down. The girl never cried. She didn’t scream or try to get away. And that broke Nomi wide open inside.

The soldier jerked his head toward the shiny black train. “Go on, Papa. Your train to Silver City is about to leave.”

The father stood frozen in the middle of the platform. A cloud of steam gave him an insubstantial air, as if he were becoming a ghost right then and there. But his agonized eyes never disappeared into the haze. He wasn’t honored to have his daughter ripped from him and taken to the palazzo. This wasn’t how Graces were chosen. This was a travesty.

A tragedy.

And Nomi couldn’t bear it.

The train whistle blew. In the silence afterward, she stood up, pointed to the far end of the platform, near the engine, and yelled in a low, gruff voice, “There’s someone on the tracks!”

Every soldier turned to look at her.

She kept pointing and ran a few steps closer to the train. “I saw him fall! Did no one else see him? He’ll be crushed!” Fear and urgency coated her words. Maybe that would sell the lie. The fear was certainly real.

The soldier holding on to the girl glanced toward the train’s engine, now belching steam with exuberance. The tracks disappeared into a cloud of dirty white. The wheels started to turn.

“Hurry!” Nomi yelled, in desperation. “Save him!”

Her throat threatened to close. Her gambit wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t breathe.

And then, to her amazement, someone down the platform started yelling too. The soldiers turned as one and jogged toward the front of the train.

Nomi ran to the girl and grabbed her arm. She pulled her to her father and pushed them both onto the train. “Hurry, hurry,” she murmured, forgetting to pitch her voice low.

The wheels started to churn, and with a great rumble, the train slowly moved forward. But the soldiers were running back this way. They were yelling at the conductor to stop the train.

Nomi’s heart pounded in her ears.

Panicked, she leapt onto the train after the father and daughter and shoved the door closed behind her. She watched from the window as the soldiers milled around angrily, shaking their fists at the train as it rapidly gained speed.

It hadn’t stopped.

The conductor hadn’t heard.