She waited a long time, but her father didn’t come to the door. Malachi put his hand on her lower back.
She tried the knob. It opened easily, and she wondered why her father hadn’t locked it. He usually did.
“Papa?” she called as she stepped inside. “Mama?”
The words caught in her throat and poisoned her on their way down.
The living room was in shambles. Chairs broken, the table on its side, dishes shattered on the floor. And bodies.
Two bodies, broken like the plates.
Nomi stumbled into the room, tripped on the torn-up carpet, and fell down beside her mother’s still form. There might have been blood, dried into the carpet. There might have been wounds, dark, gory breaches of flesh and bone, but she didn’t see. All she saw was the soft blue of her mother’s dress, the warm chestnut of her hair.
There might have been the smell of death and rot.
Nomi bent forward and sobbed.
Two bodies.
She forced herself to raise her head. The other body. Was it—?
Her father, not Renzo.
The realization wasn’t comforting. It was more grief, more pain piling onto her chest until she couldn’t breathe.
Her parents were dead.
Dead.
Like Malachi’s father was dead.
Had Asa tortured them himself? Or had he let his soldiers do his dirty work while he toyed with his new Graces in the palazzo?
Where was Renzo?
“Nomi,” Malachi said quietly, from behind her. “I’m so sorry. I thought they might ask your parents some questions, but I never imagined… I never dreamed Asa would order them to…”
She cried harder.
He crouched down beside her and wrapped her tightly in his arms. For a while, she lived in the darkness and the horror and the pain. He left her for a few moments and returned, his arms tightening around her again.
“I looked in the other rooms. Your brother isn’t here,” he said at last. “There’s still a chance he’s alive. We need to find him.”
“What makes you think Asa hasn’t found him already?” she asked, her voice breaking. Her heart breaking. She pulled herself out of his arms, the room springing to horrible clarity around her again. “He—he killed my parents. I can’t—I don’t—”
She couldn’t put herself back together.
A strange sight caught her eye, stopped her brain from spiraling further. A book, precisely centered on the floor in the middle of the room. It was open. No torn pages, not like the others. No bloodstains.
She crawled to it across the ripped and crusted carpet.
Why did it look so pristine?
When she saw what it was—the book of legends, it’s the reason for all of this, oh, help me—a moan curled up her throat. How cruel.
It was open to the first page, “The Lovebirds.”
Long before our ancestors’ ancestors were born, there was no land here.
There was no land beneath Nomi either. She was falling into darkness.
“Look,” Malachi said, crouching down beside her, pointing to a faint scratch of ink in the corner of the page.
Nomi held the book up to the light filtering through the dusty windows.
The moon loves a man, and a bird almost dies. A tattoo and a ghost, and a sister who lies.
Her brother’s handwriting, cramped and hurried, curving the tiny words along the letters printed on the page.
“What does it mean?” Malachi asked. “Is it some kind of clue?”
At first, Nomi had assumed the book was a message from Asa. But this was Renzo’s writing. One of Renzo’s riddles.
The moon loves a man, and a bird almost dies. A tattoo and a ghost, and a sister who lies.
He was talking about the stories in the book—the lovebirds, the moon and her lover, the tattooed woman who got revenge from beyond the grave. It wasn’t a clue. It meant nothing beyond that, nothing.…
A strange memory surfaced, one she hadn’t thought about in years. She and Renzo were twelve and had just read the book of legends for the first time. They’d had the brilliant idea to disguise Nomi in boys’ clothes and sneak down to the river on the night of a full moon, to see if they could attract the moon’s affections. So silly—
But they’d made it to the river, grabbing Luca, Renzo’s best friend, on the way. They’d stood on the riverwalk and stared at the moon, and the boys had told ghost stories. Renzo had actually convinced Luca she was a distant cousin named Felicio. Nomi had lied shamelessly, playing up the deception, telling him she had a tattoo the entire length of her back. The stories she told that night! And then—and then a constable had come, and they’d hidden beneath the bridge, among the river grasses. Nomi had gotten her borrowed pants wet, and Luca had almost fallen into the river. He’d shrieked like a banshee until Renzo had pulled him up onto dry ground.
Nomi’s pulse pounded in her throat. Could it be? Could he possibly have been thinking of that night? He couldn’t have known she would find this, read this.… Could he?
But it was something. And the smell, the dried blood, the reality was starting to seep back into her mind. She would happily grasp at the slightest straw.
“I think I know what this means,” she said. “We—we should go.”
Malachi helped her to her feet. She stared helplessly at her parents. “I—we can’t leave them. They should be cremated; they shouldn’t be here, out in the open like this—”
“I know,” Malachi said gently. “But we can’t help them now. Asa’s soldiers may be watching the house, in which case we may now be in danger ourselves, and even if they’re not, we can’t call for the magistrate. He’ll know this was foul play. He’ll want to question us. We have to find your brother.”
He was right. She knew that. But the tears fell again as they left, the book of legends cradled to her chest. She turned right out of the door and started walking, forgetting the horse.
“Nomi,” Malachi said, reining her in. He took the book gently and carefully put it into their one small bag. Then he helped her onto the horse. The sidewalk was full now, curious faces turning toward them.
A sudden fear pierced Nomi’s haze. What would happen if someone recognized her? She spent most of her life in the house, but her father had often had his fellow foremen to dinner. How would she explain why she was here? What would she say if they asked about her parents? Surely someone wondered why they hadn’t shown up for work. How long had her parents been there, alone and left to rot?
And what about Asa’s soldiers? Wouldn’t they still be here? Watching? Waiting?
“Malachi, hurry,” she whispered, her throat raw from crying.
He urged the horse down the street, following her whispered directions, vigilant for any hint of soldiers. Nomi was vigilant too; she kept expecting Asa himself to step out from every shadowed doorway, his handsome face twisted into a monster’s devil grin.
NINETEEN
SERINA
THE SUN ROSE through the lingering smoke, bloodred and magnificent. Most of the southern tip of the island was destroyed. Small fires flared here and there, but the bulk of the conflagration had burned itself out. Part of Hotel Misery still stood, but the wing that had held the firearms had collapsed. Val thought the ammunition must have caught fire, causing an explosion. Serina stood at the edge of the rubble, overwhelmed. Fox and Twig picked through the crumbled concrete, but there were no weapons to salvage, no injured women to rescue, only bodies. Nero and Diego were dust. A couple of the girls had died too.
Cliff kicked a broken brick. “What are we supposed to do now?”
They had little food, few weapons, and the island had become nearly unlivable; ash ran in the stream, and most of the citrus trees were burnt husks. To the north, the island was untouched, but there was little there to sustain them. If the boat was even a few days late—
Anika ran up the path. “Grace!” she yelled.
Serina turned to her.
“They’re coming,” she said grimly.
At that moment, Serina didn’t know how to feel. The boat was a prayer answered and a curse too, when they were still picking themselves up and taking stock.
“How many boats?” she asked. Was it possible that this was a regular prison boat? Or had Asa seen the fire and immediately sent soldiers to investigate?
“Just one that we can see,” Anika replied. “We’ve little time to prepare.”
Serina took a deep breath. When she’d left the compound this morning, she’d seen nothing but discouraged, scared faces. Everyone knew most of the firearms had been lost. Everyone knew there was no water, little food, and the Superior’s soldiers would be coming.
But it was only one boat.
“Let’s gather everyone in front of the compound,” she said. “Even our lookouts.”
Anika yelled for the others.
They hurried down the path, dodging the fallen, smoking corpses of trees. Serina reached the compound and stood outside while Anika went to gather everyone. While she waited, she took a few moments to close her eyes and breathe.
Anika was fast. The clearing filled with women quickly.
Val hurried out of the building to meet Serina. “We’ve got seven working firearms, with enough ammunition for maybe ten rounds each.”
“That’s not a lot,” Serina said, heart sinking.
“No, it’s not,” Val said. “But if we station shooters on the cliffs like we planned, it should be enough.”
Serina looked out over the women, most of them dirty, exhausted, with soot-streaked faces and pursed mouths. Their defeat was palpable. Maris slumped against Helena’s shoulder. Ember stood at the rear of the crowd, hands clasped behind her back, her face stone. Fox kept shaking her head, her gaze fixed to the blackened ground. Serina focused on other familiar faces: Claw, the older woman from the Cave who’d introduced herself by telling Serina she’d clawed out a man’s eyes. Mirror, her spiky hair streaked with soot. Shard, one of their markswomen, and Tremor. No one returned Serina’s gaze.
“You know, when I got here,” Serina began, pitching her voice loud enough so everyone could hear, “one of the first things anyone called me was dead girl.” She glanced sidelong at Val, who had the grace to smile sheepishly. “And then Oracle called me iron. She told me strength was currency here. She told me I’d have to fight. I didn’t know anything about fighting.… I’d been taught my whole life to be soft and accommodating. Obedient. Submissive. Beautiful.” Serina swept her aching body into an exaggerated curtsy. A few eyes lifted, a few mouths quirked. “Well, I’m not beautiful anymore. Or submissive. Or obedient. Or accommodating. I’m not even iron, because iron is strong but brittle, unyielding. And sometimes you have to yield. Sometimes you have to adapt.”
She gestured to the destruction behind her. “Nero and Diego burned down the one place we felt safe. They killed our friends. They destroyed most of our weapons. And they alerted the Superior that something is wrong on this island. All of that is true, and it’s all bad. But. Nero, Diego—every single one of those guards paid with their lives. They’ll never leave Mount Ruin. We will. We still have weapons. We have a few firearms, yes, but we have ourselves too. We have our homemade knives and our spears and our fists and our strength. We have our currency. We have earned our way off this island. We have paid for our sins and the sins of the men who put us here. We have paid our dues.”
Serina’s voice hummed into the silence. No one was looking at the ground now.
“We’re going to set up our markswomen on the cliffs. We’re going to give them all the ammunition we’ve got. And the rest of us are going to wait at the head of the path, out of sight. When the bullets run out, it’ll be our turn.” She glanced once more at Val, her expression fierce. “Because I refuse to be a dead girl.”
A shout tore through the crowd.
“We are getting off this island!” Serina yelled.
A roar answered back.
“Let’s go,” Serina said to Anika and Val, who flanked her.
Anika nodded and added her voice. “We will take our due!”
The women of Mount Ruin raised their fists and their voices. Serina didn’t see defeat anymore. She saw defiance.
By the time they retrieved their weapons from the compound and marched en masse down the path to the pier, the sun had risen fully and the boat was nearly upon them. Val handed out the firearms to the women he deemed the best markswomen, including Maris, who stepped forward with the others, her chin held high.
“Thank you,” Serina said. “Thank you for being a part of this.”
Maris’s lips trembled, but her dark eyes held Serina’s gaze steadily. “If I have to kill more people to keep Helena safe, to protect us from Asa, I’ll do it.”
Serina nodded.
Helena pulled Maris to her, tangling her hands in her black curtain of hair, and kissed her. When they separated, Maris’s ivory skin was flushed and her eyes bright.
“I love you,” Helena said.
Maris smiled. “I love you too.”
Maris’s glow reminded Serina to tell the women with firearms to darken their skin so they wouldn’t stand out against the cliff. With all the ash and char, no one would have to go looking for mud.
“All right,” Val said. “Markswomen, take your positions. Everyone on the cliffs.”
Val hefted his own firearm. Serina took a cue from Helena and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her face into the hollow of his throat. When she raised her head, he kissed her, a promise, not a goodbye.
Please, not a goodbye.
“Be safe,” he said softly, and then left to get into position.
Anika handed Serina a homemade blade, this one with a sharp point and ugly serrated edge. “You should be able to do some damage with this,” she said, with an equally pointed smile.
“You seem to welcome violence,” Serina replied. It wasn’t that she envied Anika, exactly, but Serina felt so scared all the time. She wished she could forge ahead without thought, without fear. “How do you keep the fear at bay?”
Anika laughed, but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “I don’t. I’m terrified.”
“But—” Serina started, eyes widening.
“Despite what you may think, I hate fighting,” Anika said. “But violence has saved my life and the lives of my sisters. So I do welcome it. If fighting—killing—keeps me alive, if it gives me the chance to make my life my own, to someday save my family, then I’ll do it with a smile.”
Serina didn’t know what to say. She squeezed Anika’s arm briefly, then headed down the hill.
Her makeshift army halted at the stretch of path where the whirls of lava rock looked like the surface of the moon. She held up a hand, and the women behind her stopped. Then she crept forward to get a better vantage of the pier.
Serina crouched low behind a small outcropping, studying the cliffs for any hint of her shooters. She didn’t see anything. Good.
The boat was nearing; it was close enough now that Serina could hear the rhythmic pounding of the steam engine. She couldn’t see onto the deck yet. But soon.
The engines slowed.
Slowly, the boat approached the pier.
A crowd of people stood on deck. Serina’s heart moved to her throat and started to choke her. Three rows, ten deep. But not of prisoners. There were no women aboard.
Asa had sent troops. He’d seen Nero’s signal. Every hope she’d had that this was a regular prison boat evaporated. The shriek of the boat hitting the pier split the quiet apart. Smoke still hung in the air, a haze that gave the sunlight a strange quality, like looking through dirty glass.
“What do we do?” Mirror whispered. “There are so many of them.”
“We stick to the plan,” Serina replied, her heart sinking. “Markswomen first. Then—then we fight.”
Serina had hoped, prayed, it would be easy… a few sailors, a couple of guards. A quick victory.
The troops jumped onto the p
ier. Thirty men on the concrete slab—they overwhelmed it. Two of them tied off the boat. They all held firearms. These were not sailors, not like the men who’d brought Nomi and Maris from Bellaqua. These men were prepared for trouble.
Before the soldiers could head for the path, the women hidden in the cliffs began their assault. The gunshots echoed against the stone, louder than the crash of waves.
Several soldiers fell where they stood. Others lifted their weapons and returned fire.
Curls of smoke rose from the firearms. The cacophony swelled.
Blood screamed in Serina’s ears. Her girls, Val… they were up there. They were targets. She prayed the cliffs would keep them safe, keep them invisible.
Bullets flashed. Several dinged against the pocked concrete. Chunks of rock crumbled, falling back onto the pier.
More soldiers fell. Serina tried to count—four bodies, no, maybe six. Ten? The smoke and the chaos blinded her. Beside her, Mirror trembled with nerves.
Serina’s hand was slick on her knife. Such a small weapon against bullets and brute strength. But there were more women waiting in the shadows behind her than there were soldiers. And that boat meant freedom.
Gradually, the gunfire from the cliffs slowed. Then, abruptly, stopped.
No more bullets.
Serina swallowed. There were still at least fifteen soldiers standing. Maybe more. And they had plenty of bullets.
The men on the pier realized they were no longer being targeted. They paused, waiting.
Serina raised her knife and roared.
TWENTY
NOMI
NOMI HELD ON to the horse’s mane with both hands, newly dizzy by the height and the grief pounding in her chest.
“We need to walk from here,” she said once they reached the street that fronted the river. She hoped Renzo was sitting on a beach in Azura or another far-off country. She couldn’t bear the thought of finding him torn apart, just as her parents had been. If he wasn’t here by the river, could she believe the best for him? That he was safe? Or would this numbness that had crept over her, freezing her hands, her tongue, her heart, be with her forever?
Queen of Ruin (Grace and Fury) Page 15