Suddenly, a flash of blue cut through the gathered women like an arrow. A girl threw herself at Maris, so hard they both tumbled to the ground.

Nomi put her arms up, to protect herself or hide from whatever carnage befell her friend. A coward’s reaction.

Maris screamed breathlessly. “Helena!”

Nomi dropped her arms.

Helena? As in, the girl Maris was in love with?

Helena’s sunburned, freckled hands framed Maris’s face as she kissed Maris’s cheeks, her forehead, her mouth. The two girls melted into each other, their bodies twining like vines along the dusty ground.

Nomi blushed and shifted her gaze to the worn marble woman in the fountain, giving them what privacy she could. Maris had told Nomi about Helena, about how they’d had a plan to bring Helena to the palazzo as Maris’s handmaiden so they could be together. But Maris’s father had discovered them and forbade it, sending Maris to the palazzo alone. Maris hadn’t known what had happened to Helena, had assumed she’d never see her again.

Nomi’s chest filled with unexpected joy. Maris and Helena had actually found each other.

And that wasn’t the only miracle. Serina was free. Malachi still breathed.

For now.

Nomi glanced toward the doorway of the infirmary, but she couldn’t bear to return to its dim, blood-choked air just yet.

Maris and Helena surfaced from their embrace, pink-cheeked and grinning.

Nomi had never seen Maris happy, not really, not like this. Not with the kind of brilliant, joyful smile that reached her eyes. She looked like a different person, or the same person washed clean.

Asa had never made Nomi smile like that, she realized, and the thought brought her comfort. She’d cared for him, trusted him when she shouldn’t have, but she hadn’t loved him. Not the way Maris loved Helena. That made it easier to hate him now.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Maris said to Helena, her voice still breathless. She stood up and brushed off her dusty dress, her gaze never leaving Helena’s. “I thought you’d be married off, that your parents—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Helena said, tucking a strand of Maris’s hair behind her ear. Her own hair was a ragged sandy-blond mop. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought I’d never see you again, and you’re here.” She touched Maris’s face, as if reassuring herself that she was not a dream.

“My father turned you in, didn’t he?” Maris asked, the breathlessness gone. “He turned you in, even after I did everything he demanded. Didn’t he?”

Helena raised one shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know who did. They came for me in the middle of the night. My father didn’t try to stop them.”

Maris buried her face in Helena’s shoulder. They wrapped their arms around each other.