“I could kick Emma out, and you could stay in my room,” Hanna offered.

“Hanna, no,” Mia admonished her before Hanna got too carried away with fantasies of evicting her little sister. “Finn and I were talking, and we could empty out all the things we put in your room after you moved out. We hadn’t meant to turn it into storage like that, but my summer cleaning got away from me.”

“No, I don’t want you guys going to any trouble. I’ll be fine on the air mattress until I can figure out what I’m going to do next.”

“Well, there’s no rush. You’ve been through a lot, and you need time to sort things out. We all understand, and we just want you to be okay.”

“Thanks, that—” I was going to finish with means a lot to me, but at that exact moment, Luna decided to clock Niko in the head as hard as she could.

He immediately screamed, so Lissa started to cry, and within seconds, all the kids were having a meltdown. Hanna finished cooking while Mia and I dealt with consoling everyone else.

They calmed down in time for supper, but then everyone was talking, and the conversation never went back to me or my future plans. Which was fine by me, because I didn’t want to talk about it anyway.

The great thing about having ten of us in the house—five of them under the age of eight—was there was always so much commotion going on, and it was easy to get lost in it if you wanted to.

Despite my lengthy midday nap, I was exhausted by bedtime. Unfortunately, the twins weren’t nearly as ready for sleep as I was at nine-thirty P.M. After three rounds of their favorite lullaby, Luna finally went down, but Lissa was still fussing.

I’d tried everything I could think of, so I took Lissa from her crib, and I held her in my arms. I can’t say for certain that it worked for her, but within minutes, I was out.

And the next time I opened my eyes, I was in the dungeon again.

Not the prison cell, but the corridor outside of it. It looked the same as it had last time. Narrow and dark, although the stones seemed more rust colored. Or maybe it was just because it was brighter. All the lamps were lit, with one on either side every few feet.

The hallway ended in an almost blindingly bright light, and I shielded my face with my arm as I walked into the atrium. It was a tall silo of a room, with a stone staircase that wound up to the glass roof letting all the sunlight pour in.