But when she turned the corner, Nomi froze. A figure waited by the secret panel. Right in front of it, as if she knew it was there.

“I saw you on the terrace this morning,” Ines said. Her curves shimmered in a white silken robe that caught the moonlight. “I wondered if this was how you came in.”

The older woman’s serenity had cracked. Her age had seemed to find her in the weeks Nomi had been away; fine lines framed her eyes, and she was frowning, something she’d once told Nomi Graces never did.

“Malachi said only he and his father knew about the tunnels.” Nomi crossed her arms over her chest. The cloak enveloped her completely; she was a shadow to Ines’s light.

“Malachi had such potential for kindness,” Ines said, and Nomi was struck again by the sense of age, of exhaustion, that clung to the woman. She had suffered in the past few weeks. Whatever else, Nomi believed that. “He should have been Superior.”

“He will be,” Nomi said. “He is still alive.”

Ines took a step back. “You are lying.”

“Asa tried to kill him, but he failed. He did succeed in killing the Superior, though. Malachi didn’t to that. Asa did.”

Ines stared at Nomi, her eyes two black shadows in the dim hall. “And what are you planning to do?”

Nomi took a breath. If she told the truth, would Ines let her go?

“I am a Grace,” she said at last. “I am going to visit the Superior.”

Ines’s hands clenched at her sides. She didn’t speak. But after a moment, after another wordless stare, she lifted her gaze above Nomi’s head as if she were suddenly invisible, and walked down the hall. Nomi watched her go, but Asa’s mother never turned around.

Nomi didn’t wait. She pulled the panel open and slipped into the tunnel.

THIRTY-THREE

SERINA

THE DUNGEON DOOR ground and squealed too soon. Serina sat up, dazed and thirsty, and not ready.

She’d been determined to accept her fate as calmly as Ember, but now that the moment had come, she found herself desperately clutching Val’s arm.

“Serina?” a whisper carried across the sea of bodies.

Serina stood up at the voice. A figure was framed in the doorway, and it wasn’t Asa.

“Renzo?”

He saw her, and his whole face changed, opened up. He beckoned.

“Come on. I’ve got the keys for the shackles. And a firearm. We need to hurry.”

Serina wove through the women, all of them shaking off sleep and beginning to stand, their chains clanking. Dumbly, she asked, “How are you here?”

Was she dreaming?