Across the room, Audrina laughed, eyes glazed with the tithe. “I… told you. I’m… strong,” she gasped.

The webs crawled to Ren’s wrists. Surged up her arms.

“Zofi,” Ren shouted.

Her sister sprang from the main room where she’d been hiding, crouched just out of sight, listening to the conversation. Zofi took one glance at Ren and slapped a hand against her leg. Ren watched in confusion, not sure what Zofi was doing—it didn’t look like any tithe she’d ever seen. Yet a dark trickle of red appeared against the brown fabric of Zofi’s breeches.

A second later, Ren felt as though a warm, thick blanket had enveloped her. The spidering curse began to fade from her hands, shriveling against her skin even as she watched.

Zofi. Fighting back Audrina’s curse.

“Stop. Her,” Zofi muttered through gritted teeth, and Ren jarred herself back to reality.

Ren snatched the bloodletter she’d dropped and leaped for the bed. She grabbed Aud’s hair in a fist, wrenched the girl’s head to the side, and pressed the blade against her throat.

In response, Audrina screamed.

It was a deafening, window-shattering sound. Footsteps thundered from all directions, and Ren staggered backward, releasing her.

“Help!” Audrina shouted at the top of her lungs. “The traitors are here.” She smiled as she said it. At the same time, Aud dragged the bloodletter across her arm once more. Ren flinched, expecting an attack. Then she stared in horror as Audrina’s glowing Vulgar Arts scars winked out of sight.

A camouflage tithe. Hiding the evidence of her crimes. So if anyone burst into this room now, they wouldn’t see the monster under their noses.

Zofi grabbed Ren’s arm and yanked her into motion. “We have to go.”

“But—”

“Call the Talons!” Audrina lurched after them into the maid’s chambers. She dove for a bellpull on the wall. Too late, Ren realized which one it was. She grabbed Aud’s wrist to stop her, but she was too slow. A deafening clamor rang through her skull, echoed through the room.

The emergency alert. Every Talon and mender in the Keep would be racing toward the maids’ chambers now.

“Run!” Zofi shouted in her ear, and together they took off at a sprint.

“This way.” Ren took the lead, bolting for the passage into the boys’ dormitory. They sprinted along it. But then, at the far end, shadows appeared, racing their way. Uniformed shadows.

Talons.

“Right,” Ren barked, and nearly shoved Zofi through a wall. The side passage led past the dungeons, out into the practice fields. If they could get outside, they could make for the city, lose the Talons in the cobbled streets. They just needed to—

Crash.

Ren collided headlong with a pair of stocky figures that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Talons from an adjoining corridor.