During the day, Inaya listened for voices, conversation, to try and glean some hint of where she was. The type of holding cell was important. This one had a filter instead of a door, which was expensive. It was where an important prisoner would go—one suspected of being a shifter. If she was in some central city cell, they likely had an idea of who she was. But if she was still in Inoublie, there was hope that she could play at being falsely accused. Of what she was accused, of course, she still had no idea. Repeated attempts to talk to those who deactivated the filter long enough to pass her food and water—all of it infused with saffron—met with failure. The guards were all men—older, experienced men with sour, grimacing faces that told her exactly what they thought of her and her kind. She begged and pleaded with them like an innocent woman. In her situation, shedding tears wasn’t difficult.

But not one man spoke to her.

It made it easier, in the end, to sort out her story before they came for her. She knew what an interrogation looked like. Her second husband, Khos, had been a mercenary—a very good one—and he had worked for one of Nasheen’s best bounty hunters. God’s Angels, however, were not as… blunt as Nasheen’s bounty hunters. They would only use force against a woman if they had to… or if they could prove she was a shifter. If they knew she was a shifter—without a doubt—she would no longer be human in their eyes. And from the cheerless faces of the men who brought her food, her humanity—if not in question—was already suspect just for being here. She had to convince them otherwise.

On the fourth day, they threw another prisoner in with her. Inaya did not know her, and her first fear was that it was some trick—put two shifters together and hope they incriminate themselves.

But the girl was young, only fourteen or fifteen, and not a shifter at all. Not unless she was playing the same game Inaya was.

“I don’t know why I’m here. There were riots. Did they take you in the riots?” the girl asked.

“What riots?”

“They say it’s the misborn”—Inaya could not help but grimace at the use of the derogatory term for shifters—“and a bomb went off at the Angels’ headquarters in the capital. There have been retaliations. It’s horrible. Really horrible.”

Inaya felt a wave of fear, but kept her tone neutral. “How terrible.”

“They’re going door to door. That’s why they took me. But it wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with anything. It’s all just a terrible mistake.” She wrung her hands.

Inaya stopped asking questions. She was afraid what the girl would reveal.