A guard brought more buckets of water and a couple dozen small loaves of bread. Twenty-four rolls for one hundred bodies. Serina didn’t eat. Why, when she wouldn’t need the nutrients for much longer? Val didn’t take one either, even after she begged him to.

Some of the girls fell asleep. Some cried in their dreams. Helena drummed a foot against the floor and twisted her hands into her stomach. No one had seen Maris at the execution. The soldiers hadn’t returned her to the dungeon. “She’s probably with the other Graces,” Serina offered, but Helena didn’t find comfort in the thought.

Serina wasn’t much comforted either.

“Do you think Malachi will be able to fix all this?” Serina asked.

“Not this,” Val said. “But maybe Viridia, in time.”

“Nomi will help him. She’ll make sure he remembers us.” Serina let her eyelids droop closed. Her head swam. She felt untethered, as if part of her had already left her body and was drifting, ready to leave all this behind. But a deep, heavy pit in her stomach told her the panic was only lying in wait. That she wasn’t as accepting as her body would like her to believe.

“Nomi will make sure,” Val agreed.

“She’ll be sad,” Serina said faintly as she drifted. “We were supposed to save each other.…”

Hours, her last hours, passed too quickly and too slowly all at once.

THIRTY-TWO

NOMI

NOMI SPENT THE day feeling as if she were about to climb out of her skin. She hid in her old room, running through her plan over and over. It was simple. Wait until late at night, sneak into Asa’s room, kill him in his bed. Just as she’d hoped to do the night before. Except this time, no matter what she heard, she wouldn’t hesitate.

By some miracle, she’d not been noticed by Ines or any of the guards during the execution, but she couldn’t take the chance again. So she was trapped in this room, trapped by the daylight. She prayed for the sun to move more quickly through the sky, for the world to plunge into darkness.

For a few groggy hours, she curled up on Ria’s bed by the window and slept, driven awake again and again by nightmares.

Late in the afternoon, Angeline brought Nomi some food. Cassia and Maris followed her into the room, their faces shadowed with worry.

“I want to know what’s happening.” Cassia sank to the edge of Ria’s bed. “Why did Malachi kill his father and leave us with his vile brother? Do you know, Nomi?”

Ria had spent most of the morning being fitted for gowns. Now she lay stretched out on her back, staring at the ceiling, her small body barely denting the coverlet.