Nomi moved the chair out of her way, shuddering as it scraped loudly across the floor. She’d made so much noise… surely someone would come soon. She tried to hurry, but the walls seemed to go on forever, smooth and featureless.

The darkness pressed close.

And then it didn’t. A flickering glow bloomed behind her. Heart in her throat, Nomi turned around. There, in the doorway, stood the baker’s wife, a lamp in her hands.

The woman looked at Nomi.

Nomi opened her mouth. Shut it again. Her throat closed. Panic made her vision wobble. She needed to breathe. The hood of her cloak had fallen away from her face. This woman could see her, could tell she was a girl, could describe her when the constables came, even if somehow Nomi escaped.

“Are you loyal to the new Superior?” the woman asked, her voice hoarse and strangely uncertain.

Nomi started to say yes, but something in the woman’s face, something in the tight worry of her mouth, made Nomi pause. She thought of the girl she’d seen through the window, helping this woman clean up. A daughter. Young, with a sweet round face. Nomi blurted out the truth instead. “I am loyal to the rightful Heir. Malachi.”

The baker’s wife didn’t respond. Nomi held her breath until her vision sparked at the corners.

At last, the woman held the lamp a little higher, until the whole room was lit, and inclined her head. Mutely, Nomi turned to look where the woman indicated and saw it. The little fat man.

Then the baker’s wife disappeared, taking the light with her.

Nomi let out her breath. She scurried to where she’d seen the relief.

When her fingertips brushed across the fat belly, she felt a tiny bump in the center and pressed it. With a click, part of the wall opened inward. A wave of stale air wafted up at her. She gulped.

TWENTY-SEVEN

SERINA

“EMBER, YOU CAN’T do this,” Serina said. She couldn’t grab the taller woman’s shoulders, with her hands still shackled, but she wanted to. She wanted to shake her. “It has to be me.”

Ember shook her head, her expression resolute. Not defiant, not anymore. “Grace, I have watched too many women die,” she said, with a strange, sad acceptance. “I will not watch another one.”

The grief was too heavy, too much. Serina couldn’t bear its weight.

It was the only reasoning she couldn’t argue against. How could she deny Ember this? Ember, who had watched Oracle die right in front of her, who had seen so many of her friends killed in the ring?

Serina’s throat burned with tears and misery. “You know it should be me.”

“It will be soon enough,” Ember replied, her voice flat.

We’re all going to die.

The door creaked again. The guards shoved several buckets into the room, sloshing water across the floor.