They stepped out, and the filter went opaque again, but not before Inaya saw another woman being escorted down the hall. She was not screaming but screeching, one arm half as long as the other, still webbed and covered in black feathers. Someone had stuffed her into a plain gray habit; it was damp and twisted with mucus and dried blood.

Inaya turned to her new cell companion. “What’s happening out there?”

“Revolution,” the woman said, grimly. Her face was puffy and badly bruised. She was at least two decades older than Inaya, with the beefy body of some cook or well-fed shop laborer. They had not bothered to clean her up yet. She still wore the clothes she had been picked up in, reeking of sticky saffron.

“You’re a shifter?” Inaya asked.

“Me? No. My husband was, though.”

“Was?”

The woman shook her head. “God only knows what bloody things are happening out there. He revealed himself. Now we’re lost.”

“What is happening? Please, I’ve been here for many weeks.”

“You don’t know? No, I don’t expect they’d tell you, in here. Someone released a burst in Montmare. The Patron’s cousins were killed, and hundreds of others. The Patron took issue with his kin, and the people mourned the civilians, and then… you know the rest. You know what they do to people like my husband.”

“What are they doing? Please, exactly what are they doing?”

“Smoking them all out,” the woman said. “It’s the end days. The final purge of every shifter. There’s war in the streets. Everything’s burning.”

“And the Fourré? Who’s leading the Fourré?”

The woman looked confused. “What do you mean? The same as always. The Madame de Fourré is leading them. Who else would go on such a bloody rampage?”

Inaya leaned against the wall, slid to the floor. “This is very bad,” she said.

“Worse than that,” the woman said. “My sons have no parents now. I told these goddamned heretics that, but they don’t care. They just want to lock us all up and burn us. They won’t kill women though, will they? There’s still a chance for a trial? Tell me there’s a chance?”

“Of course,” Inaya said softly. “There is always a chance.” Inaya had known for some time that she’d been betrayed, but until now, she didn’t realize how badly. Michel must have turned the whole movement—Gabrielle, and the eight cell leaders—even Hynri!—all of them, in lock step with some bloody scheme to topple the government itself. But what would the people think of shifters now? They had become everything the people feared they were. Whatever the priests and Patron wanted to do to them now, they would have free rein to do so, without any repercussions. If her people were not bottled up in jars already, they soon would be.

“How long have you been here?”