“I gave it up willingly,” Madeleine corrected. Even with all her doubts, it was hard to hear outsiders criticize an institution she’d given so much of her life to. “I never expected to see my money again”—what little she’d had left over after her brother’s death, anyway—“and the order gave me a generous loan when I left. I don’t bear them any ill will. That’s important for you to understand about me.”

Jonathan nodded. “Fair enough.”

“I loved my sisters. I loved my home.” Oh no, her eyes were smarting! She wouldn’t cry, not here of all places. “I just…couldn’t be there.”

“Because it was too hard?”

Hæra’s voice was sharp, and when Madeleine looked at her in surprise, her amber eyes were sharper.

“Excuse me?” she said.

Hæra looked her dead in the eye. Her pale cheeks took on a reddened cast. “Living such a life requires great strength of character,” she said, laying an unnatural emphasis on the last three words. “I admired—that is, I would have admired you for that—but you left. You quit.”

Madeleine’s muscles all seemed to lock up at once at the naked contempt in her voice.

Jonathan began, “Hæra, what⁠—”

“And why was that?” Hæra continued. “Because you weren’t what people thought you were?”

Madeleine should say, You don’t know anything about it, so be quiet. But all of a sudden, she found herself back at Sacred Heart, in that lonely room on the night she’d faced the truth of herself. She’d stared into the shadows and admitted that the order didn’t really know who…or what…she was. And she’d known she had to leave. The charade was over.

The openness had vanished from Jonathan’s face. He scowled at his daughter. “What’s the matter with you?”

“The matter with me?” Hæra pointed at Madeleine as if in accusation. “She’s just admitted to giving up on what made her who she was, on what proved her strength. She’s not what she pretended to be!”

“Are any of us?” Jonathan’s face reddened. “Are you?”

So much for a nice meal. Madeleine pushed back in her seat. The legs scraped against the floor. “I should leave. I⁠—”

Hæra beat her to it. Without a word, she shot to her feet, and her own chair fell backward to the floor. It was still clattering when she bolted through the back door, slamming it behind her until the frame clattered too.