“Why do you even care?” Genya had muttered to her, pulling the blankets up.

“I don’t. But if you can’t fight, you’re a liability.”

“I don’t care if I get hurt.”

“I do,” I’d protested.

“Alina needs to watch her own back,” Tamar said. “She can’t be looking after you.”

“I never asked her to.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we only got what we asked for?” Tamar said. Then she’d pinched and prodded and generally harassed, until finally Genya had thrown off her covers and agreed to a single combat lesson—in private, away from the others, with only the Priestguards as audience.

“I’m going to flatten her,” she’d grumbled to me. My skepticism must have been evident, because she’d blown a red curl off her scarred forehead and said, “Fine, then I’ll wait for her to fall asleep and give her a pig nose.”

But she’d gone to that lesson and the next one, and as far as I knew, Tamar hadn’t woken up with a pig nose or with her eyelids sealed shut.

Genya continued to keep her face covered and spent most of her time in her chamber, but she no longer hunched, and she didn’t shy away from people in the tunnels. She’d made herself a black silk eye patch from the lining of an old coat, and her hair was looking distinctly redder. If Genya was using her power to alter her hair color, then maybe some of her vanity had returned, and that could only mean more progress.

“Let’s get started,” she said.

Genya turned her back to the room, facing the fire, then drew her shawl over her head, keeping the fringed sides spread wide to create a screen that would hide us from prying eyes. The first time we’d tried this, the guards had been on us in seconds. But as soon as they’d seen me applying the salve to Genya’s scars, they’d given us distance. They considered the wounds she bore from the Darkling’s nichevo’ya some kind of divine judgment. For what, I wasn’t sure. If Genya’s crime was siding with the Darkling, then most of us had been guilty of it at one time or another. And what would they say to the bite marks on my shoulder? Or the way I could make shadows curl?

I took the tin from my pocket and began applying salve to her wounds. It had a sharp green scent that made my eyes water.

“I never realized what a pain it is to sit still this long,” she complained.

“You’re not sitting still. You’re wriggling around.”

“It itches.”

“How about I jab you with a tack? Will that distract you from the itching?”

“Just tell me when you’re done, you dreadful girl.” She was watching my hands closely. “No luck today?” she whispered.

“Not so far. There are only two hearths going, and the flames are low.” I wiped my hand on a grubby kitchen towel. “There,” I said. “Done.”

“Your turn,” she said. “You look—”