“Are you ready?” Serina asked. She put her hands on Nomi’s shoulders and stared at their joined reflection, remembering a moment long ago, when she’d studied their reflections just like this, wondering how Nomi had been chosen as a Grace and she had not.

“No,” Nomi said, with a rueful grin. “But I won’t ever be. Once Malachi announces me as queen, there may be riots and rebellion—it may feel, at first, like we’re breaking the country apart. But there’ll be no going back.”

“No matter what happens, I’ll be here with you,” Serina said, grateful as she was every day that she’d survived this long, that she could be at Nomi’s side.

Footsteps echoed behind them, and another reflection joined theirs in the mirror.

“And so will I,” Renzo said, with his lazy grin. He looked so grown-up in his velvet jacket. Serina could hardly believe that he was her little brother, that her little sister was about to become queen.

“Do you think Mama and Papa would be proud of us?” Serina asked, because she couldn’t imagine what they would think about this tableau, about where their children had all ended up. Their mother’s one wish was to have a Grace for a daughter. Would she be horrified if she’d lived to see one of her daughters become queen instead?

“So proud. They always were,” Renzo said softly. His eyes met Serina’s in the mirror. “They were horrified when you were sent to Mount Ruin. Father petitioned the magistrate—he almost got himself arrested fighting to have you freed.”

Nomi gasped.

“He did?” Serina’s eyes watered.

Nomi lunged for a tissue and handed it back to her. Serina closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath, blotting to preserve the kohl liner she’d so carefully applied. She couldn’t break down now. But her heart stitched itself a little more strongly together, knowing her parents had fought for her. She’d always assumed they had been ashamed.

“I always wondered what they would have done if they’d known I could read,” Nomi whispered. “I wondered if they’d have turned me in.”

“I wondered too,” Serina said softly. So many of the girls on Mount Ruin had been sent there by their own families.

“Never.” Renzo shook his head. “Nomi, Father knew. You were never very good at hiding it.”

“What?” Nomi twisted to look him in the eye without the mirror between them.

He shrugged. “He and Mama loved us. They wanted us to be happy.”

Nomi gave a little hiccupping laugh. “I’m so happy you’re both here. That you’re safe. I wish… I wish they could have been here too.”