“Why would I trust you, Leora?” she says. “Why would I ever trust you?” I want to cry at hearing her say my name. “You lied,” Gull states. I’ve heard this voice in my dreams – but never this loud, never this sure. “You told me lie after lie and I believed you.” My hands are still outstretched, still reaching and hoping to find hers. “I came here expecting to meet devils. Instead I met an angel.” I see her clasping Verity’s hand more tightly.

“I… I didn’t lie,” I mumble – I feel like I am on a boat, the ground swaying beneath me. “Gull, I… You’re my friend.” It sounds so pathetic, like a child in the playground.

“Don’t let her talk to you about friendship.” Verity’s voice is cold. I watch as her fingers squeeze Gull’s. “She betrays everyone she claims to love.”

“Verity, Vetty, come on.” My voice wobbles and I blink tears away. “Can’t we talk?” Verity raises an eyebrow.

My tired eyes take in Gull’s marks. Reading her comes easily. She has no punishment marks.

Up her right arm are commendations, marks that honour her defection. I see them glow almost gold, although the ink beneath her skin is black. The marks sway and glimmer into bright and glorious vignettes. A picture of her leaving home and stepping free from the forest. A scene that shows her accepting her ink like a child accepts a warm coat. I dread to imagine her back. They will not have allowed her to mark her true family on her back – she will have had to renounce them along with everything she has ever known.

“You lied to me,” she says again, and this time I cry out:

“What did I lie to you about?”

“You told me horror stories about Saintstone,” she says quietly. There is a complacent tone in her voice, a certainty. This doesn’t sound like Gull, I think. “You told me you were a victim. You said you had been forced to live under a cruel and restrictive regime. You challenged my beliefs, and for that, perhaps I should thank you.” I recognize her tone now; she sounds like Longsight. “For I know now that the life I ran from was as false and oppressive as you always said.”

As I always said? I’m dizzy, my thoughts make my mind murky and blurred and I feel a tightening of my stomach – a nausea so bitter.

“You never loved Featherstone, but you told me that Saintstone was as bad, if not worse. You told me all your sorry little tales. You made me believe in the ghosts that only you could see.” Gull drops Verity’s hand gently and runs her fingers down her skirt as though brushing out creases.