Naari didn’t try to speak to Kiva as she led her not back to the infirmary, but straight to her cell block, and then inside.

Only when they stopped at her pallet did Kiva croak out, “But . . . the Warden?”

“I lied,” Naari said. “Rooke isn’t waiting for you.”

Kiva nearly broke down then and there, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded, and whispered, “Thank you.”

“We’re not all like that,” Naari whispered back, her voice pained.

“I know,” Kiva said hoarsely.

And she did, because Naari was evidence that some guards were good. But what had just happened, what Kiva had just witnessed, what she’d nearly just experienced . . .

Kiva couldn’t get it out of her head, not even after Naari left and the cell block began to fill with people bunking down for the night.

Hours passed as she lay on her pallet, curled into a tight ball, trembling. The sounds faded as prisoners fell into exhausted sleep on either side of her, and Kiva knew she should join them, the time for her second Ordeal swiftly approaching. She needed her strength for what she might face the next day, especially given what she’d learned about the rebels’ failed rescue attempt. Unless they had another plan already in the works, then Kiva would be completing the Trial by Fire. She needed to rest, but . . . every time she closed her eyes, she saw the overdosed woman, the Butcher’s roaming hands, the angeldust glittering on them both. She heard Bones’s threat on repeat, along with the words from the men in the refectory: She’s too busy spreadin’ her legs for the guards, ain’t she?

The Healer Whore.

That’s what everyone thought she was.

They were wrong.

The Heartless Carver—she wasn’t that, either. Though right now she wished she was, if only it would take away everything she was feeling.

Kiva wasn’t sure how long she lay there shaking beneath her thin blanket and holding her bruised wrist protectively to her chest before she heard the quiet footsteps, before she felt the tender hand on her shoulder followed by the pallet depressing as someone lowered themselves onto it at her back.

She didn’t jump; she knew who it was. The scent of fresh earth and sea spray and something else unique to Jaren, like morning dew mixed with wood smoke, preceded him, wafting soothingly against her nostrils, bringing a comfort she couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Naari told me what happened,” he whispered, knowing she was awake, thanks to the trembles still racking her frame. “Are you all right?”