But Serina spoke first. “She’s my sister, Anika. I trust her, and we will try to save his life. He may die anyway. If he doesn’t, if he recovers, we will watch him closely. Because Mount Ruin is no longer his to claim. If he threatens us in any way… if he’s not the man my sister says he is, we will kill him ourselves. This is our island, won by our bodies and our blood. We will not give it up to him.”

Nomi stared at Serina as she would a stranger. Her sister had lost all hint of softness, of submission. She looked nothing like a Grace. Instead of dance steps and face creams, she spoke of bodies and blood. Of murder.

The truth Nomi had been facing since the first moment of their reunion crystallized in her mind. Serina had become a warrior.

“Are you… are you their leader?” Nomi asked, in awe.

“She’s the reason we’re free,” Anika said. “The guards forced us to fight each other. Kill each other.”

Nomi’s breath could barely find its way to her lungs. Nomi’s secret had sentenced Serina to this? Serina had been sent here for stealing a book, for knowing how to read. But it had been Nomi’s crime. This should have been Nomi’s punishment.

“Your sister refused to kill me,” Anika continued. “Grace was supposed to finish me off. Her crew would have gotten the rations, but she submitted instead. She refused to fight. No one had ever done that before.” She glanced at Serina. “She upended everything. Got some of the crews to work together, to fight back. We won.”

“I don’t understand,” Maris said, a rough edge to her voice, as if she were close to tears. “They made you kill each other?”

“Serina was sent here for reading,” Nomi added. “How could—how—”

“How could death be the punishment for that?” Anika finished for her. Her black eyes narrowed. “This prison is not only for murderers and conspirators, don’t you see? It’s for any woman who challenges the way Viridia works, in even the smallest ways. It’s for the disobedient.”

And Nomi did see, at last. She thought of the queens of Viridia, the way they’d been erased from history. The way the Superiors, then and now, had tried to destroy every wisp of independence and rebellion from the women in this country.

“How did you disobey?” she asked, glancing at Anika’s strong-jawed face.

The girl’s lips twitched into a grim smile. “Ah well. I was one of the murderers.”

Maris made a choked noise.

“Can’t defend yourself in this country either, if you’re a girl.” Anika’s expression changed, went dark and deep.

Into the silence, Malachi groaned.

THREE

SERINA