They moved quickly. Of the four sisters forced to share this room, she alone realized what was to come, and there was no point warning the others. Foreknowledge would be its own torture, and there was nothing to be done about it, anyway. She could stop it, of course, if she wanted to. But what would be the point? As healthy as her body was, it wouldn’t survive what would be required of it, and it might make things harder next time around. Next time. A pity. She was hungry for chaos now.

With care, the four girls strapped themselves into corsets, the fabric panels packed tightly with precious stones—a fortune in hidden diamonds that the revolutionaries would have seized, had they thought to look. Bulletproof, the girl observed grimly, death so close she couldn’t shut out the visions if she’d wanted to. And then the guards came for them.

They were hustled through the dining room, with all its ostentatious furniture, and something whispered across her skin. She turned, the sensation tugging her attention, and glimpsed the dark outline of a woman standing in the shadowed passageway leading to the kitchen. Faceless in the dark, the energy she radiated was as clear as a fingerprint.

A smile played on the girl’s lips, in spite of everything. The men herding them were drunk on power and self-importance—completely ignorant of how fragile they really were. How small and insignificant, how close to their own deaths. Their lives were as delicate as fairy floss, and one, two, three, they’d all be in their graves before their grandchildren were old enough to remember them. She could see it all, entropy scattering their futures.

Down the stairs and through the courtyard, the girls were reunited with their parents and brother, and then escorted into a basement room with scarred floors. They were told to wait, and Mama asked for chairs—one for herself, and one for poor, pallid Alexei—and the request was granted. Not for the first time, the girl wished her mother’s cleric and faith healer, Grigori, was still with them; he’d been a scoundrel and a fraud, but most unwilling to die. If anyone could have gotten them out of here alive …

“Where do you think they’re taking us this time?” Olga asked in a worried murmur, perhaps sensing the tension in the air. The younger girl had no answer to give, so she allowed her sister to find comfort in a squeeze of the hand, a listless shrug.