“It’s mine,” Val said. “Hidden so well no guard or prisoner has found it. I snuck it onto the island to rescue my mother, who was being held here, but”—his voice caught—“she was gone by the time I arrived.”

Anika’s suspicion eased slightly. She rocked back on her heels.

“But… but I don’t understand,” another voice, a smaller voice, said. Theodora, who went by Doll now, so named for her tall, loose-limbed body and perfectly oval golden-brown face. She’d been assigned to the Cave the same time Serina had. “What are we going to do when the prison boat comes? You said we’d escape. Where will we go?”

Serina opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn’t have an answer.

Val stepped up onto the dais next to Serina and turned to face the crowd of women filling the amphitheater. He cleared his throat. “There’s a country called Azura, to the east of Viridia across the Gallatian Sea,” Val said. “My father was a merchant and once did business there. He told me that in Azura women work, own property, even handle their own money. They can read. Our borders are closed to Azura save an occasional delegation invited by the Superior, but it’s not so very far away. And their borders are not closed to us.”

Val had told Serina about his father going to Azura. It’s what had inspired him to teach his wife to read and, in turn, the girls who came to their house to be taught in secret. It’s what had gotten him killed and Val’s mother sent to Mount Ruin. It explained a lot about Val too.

“You want us to go there?” Fox asked, brushing her white-blond hair off her furrowed brow. “Why would they take us in?”

Val shrugged. “I can’t say for certain that they would. But it will be safer than staying here or going back to Viridia.”

That’s when I’ll go, Serina thought. When we take the ship, when these women are safely on their way to Azura, when they don’t need me anymore, then I’ll take Val’s boat and save Nomi.

And if Nomi didn’t want saving? Serina pursed her lips. There was a chance that her sister had taken to life in the palazzo, that she’d found her role as a Grace less abhorrent than she expected. But Serina didn’t think so. When she’d wanted to be a Grace, when she’d told Nomi that she was willing, Nomi had said it didn’t count when you weren’t allowed to say no.

And she was right.

It didn’t matter how luxurious Nomi’s life was now. Serina was going to give her a choice. That’s all Nomi had ever wanted. The chance to decide her own fate.

If it killed her, Serina was going to give that to her sister.