When, after a week, I was allowed out of my tiny, windowless cell, I sat as ladylike as I could manage on the cold benches of the central visiting room. There were no visitors. I was surrounded by women sitting in similar fashion, each of us still moving as though we wore collars up to our chins, long skirts, and corsets, instead of loose gowns made of coarse gray material. We were not allowed hairpins for fear we would injure ourselves, so even my hair was long and undone. I felt unmoored, exposed, with nothing between my body and the air but this singular layer.

They had stripped us of everything we were taught made us women, and then told us we were mad.

Still. I would prevail. I prepared my case carefully, meticulously, in my mind. At my next meeting with the asylum master, I would convince him of my sanity and Victor’s guilt, and then I would be released. I had been good, as instructed. I would be exactly what I needed to be in this horrible place, and I would win my freedom.

Someone snickered next to me, and I turned my head to see a woman lounging in an almost profane manner on the floor.

“It will not help you,” she said, gazing up at me. Her hair was a mess, her nails bitten down until they were rimmed with dried blood. But her expression was sardonic and intelligent.

I did not want to engage with someone so clearly not in possession of her wits, but I had not spoken to anyone besides the uncaring nurses in a week, and I longed for communion of any type.

“What will not help me?” I asked.

“That.” She jerked her head toward my perfect posture, my hands folded demurely in my lap. “You cannot convince them you are sane by behaving the way you think they want you to. They do not care.”

“It is their job to care.”

She snorted, stretching out, lifting her arms over her head languorously. “It is their job to do what they are paid to do. And what they are paid to do is keep us in here. Keep us alive. That is the sum total of it. Do you know why I am here?”

I did not have to be good to her. She did not matter. “Because you are possessed of a spirit that makes you lie on the floor in polite company?”