“What a relief,” Cassia said sweetly. She shook out her silver-blond hair, the droplets stinging Nomi’s face, and climbed from the bathing pool. “But then,” she added, cocking her head as if she’d just thought of it, “that means she did something wrong, doesn’t it?”
Nomi didn’t answer, holding her anger in check with an effort. Cassia smiled quite happily as her handmaiden set her robe across her shoulders.
When the girl had left the room, Nomi bent forward, put her face in her wet hands, and groaned. “Why is she so delighted with all of this?”
“She believes she’ll gain from your scandal,” Maris said. “The Heir will choose a favorite, and Cassia hopes it will be her. She has set her sights on becoming his Head Grace.”
“You mean she wants to give birth to the next Heir?” Nomi shuddered. How could that be someone’s goal? “She may have him, and welcome.”
Maris’s dark eyes flashed, but before she could respond, Nomi caught a glimpse of Ines passing by the doorway.
Nomi hurried out of the pool, splashing Maris in her haste. Angeline scrambled after her with a robe.
“Ines, wait!” Nomi’s voice echoed too loudly.
Ines paused in the hallway, frowning.
“You have to tell me—” Nomi began.
Ines grabbed Nomi’s arm and pulled her down the corridor. Eventually, she stopped in an empty sitting room. The last rays of daylight slanted in through the open windows, which she promptly shut.
“You may not challenge me,” Ines said sternly. “There will be no shouting after me, no questions. Especially where the Superior’s men can see. Do you understand?”
“What happened to my sister?” Nomi demanded, undeterred.
“Let it go. You’re lucky the Superior didn’t punish you too,” she said.
Nomi should have been the one punished. It was her book. Her crime. “The book… it wasn’t—” she began, tremors snaking through her body.
“Your sister took responsibility for her actions,” Ines interrupted. “Nothing you say will change her fate.”
“But—”
“Nothing. It is done.” Ines’s eyes filled with an unspoken warning. If Nomi told the truth, Serina would be exposed as a liar, and that held its own punishment. “Now all you can do is stop asking questions and follow the rules. This is your life now, whether you like it or not.”
Then she disappeared through the doorway, leaving Nomi, shattered, in her wake.
SEVEN
SERINA
THE BOAT PITCHED, slamming Serina and the other prisoners hard against the slippery metal rail. Her body ached from the constant push and pull on her bound wrists, which were fixed to a rusted ring just below the rail. Tears joined the film of seawater on her cheeks as she twisted to watch the glow of Bellaqua shrink behind her.
She’d expected the Superior to punish her; a woman reading was a serious offense. But she hadn’t expected this.
Nothing felt real, except for the pain in Serina’s arms and the cold ocean spray burning her face. All her life, she’d been afraid of what Nomi’s rebellion might mean. A broken law, a merciless punishment.
Serina had never imagined, not once, that she would be the one led off in chains.
Nomi’s crime had cost her everything.
The girl beside Serina was crying so hard, her gasps sounded like choking.
One of the guards paused on his rounds, right behind the sobbing girl. “Shut it, or I’ll throw you overboard.”
The girl tried to be quiet, but she couldn’t quite manage it. The guard reached for her. Serina’s shackled hands strained toward the girl, as if somehow she could stop whatever was about to happen.
“What, you can’t handle a little crying?” a rough-edged voice called from down the line. “Obviously she’s terrified. Isn’t that what you want? To scare us? Punish us?”
The guard rushed down the slick deck, growling, “I’ll punish you.”
But as he reached her, he went down, landing hard on his back.
Serina craned around and caught a glimpse of brown skin and a defiant glare.
“Try,” the girl said. “You wouldn’t be the first. But I didn’t back down before, and I won’t now.” She held her ground, even when the guard stumbled to his feet and backhanded her across the face.
Serina and the rest of the prisoners watched in awe. Women didn’t speak like that to men. They didn’t stand up for themselves. Or… or they ended up here, Serina thought, stomach sinking.
The crying girl’s sobs rose again, the gagging sounds more pronounced this time. The guard turned to her.
Desperately, Serina bumped the girl’s arm. “Hey. What’s your name?”
The girl shook her head, wiping her dirty face against her shoulder.
“Talk to me,” Serina cajoled, watching the guard from the corner of her eye. “It’ll distract you.”
“Jacana,” the girl said, just loudly enough to be heard over the deafening pulse of the boat’s steam engine.
“Pretty name,” Serina said. “That’s a kind of bird, right?”
The girl nodded, her wild hair whipping against her bone-white cheeks. Her breathing was ragged, but her sobs had subsided.
“I’m Serina.”
The girl nodded again, a little color returning to her face.
Something out beyond the ship caught Serina’s eye. Faint at first, folded into a blanket of cloud. As they approached, an island emerged, gray and scarred. A black mass rose from its center and disappeared into the pink-tinged haze. A volcano.
Like every other child in Viridia, Serina knew the story of Mount Ruin. Long ago, the island had been called Isola Rossa. Its coasts had been home to expensive retreats for Viridia’s wealthy, designed to look like royal buildings that had been destroyed in the Floods. When the volcano had erupted, sending endless waves of lava and fatal gases pouring down upon the lush beachfront buildings, thousands had been caught in the cataclysm. Most had died, buried under lava and ash, choked by the poisonous air, or drowned off the unforgiving coast.
Isola Rossa had become Mount Ruin.
The island had been abandoned, a blackened memorial to the many lives lost, until the current Superior’s father had reclaimed it as a prison for women. Serina had always assumed those sent here were the most depraved of Viridia. She’d never, even in a nightmare, dreamed she’d be one of them.
The boat slammed into a chipped stone pier, the impact driving the prisoners to their knees. Jacana cried out. Serina’s voice was caught in her chest, trapped between her laboring lungs and pounding heart.
The guards went down the two lines of prisoners, releasing their restraints from the rusted rings. Serina’s hands dropped like rocks, still weighted by the shackles.
She stared at her wrists as if they belonged to a stranger. A week ago, she’d been confident that she could charm the Heir, that she could make her mother proud, that she could secure Nomi and herself a future in the palace. Nothing had happened as she’d expected. How many shocks would it take before her heart could bear no more?
“Straight forward, single file,” one of the guards barked. The other two shifted several full burlap sacks onto a rusty cart that shrieked as they pushed it onto the pier.
Serina took a wobbly step onto shore and looked up at her surroundings. There was no beach, just jagged cliffs with a treacherous path carved into the rock. On the headland, an ugly stone building stood sentinel, surrounded by barbed wire.
“Move along.” One of the guards cuffed Serina on the shoulder, and she stumbled, her feet catching on the uneven ground. Here, the earth was frozen into strange black waves, like the mountain had melted. The building they approached was cut right into the otherworldly rock, with heavy, warped-glass windows and wide iron bars.
Even the wind was different here; instead of sighing, it screamed.
The guard pushed her again, through the door and into a hallway that smelled of urine and stale smoke. In front of her, Jacana s
lowed to a stop, still weeping. The guard raised his arm to strike her, but Serina gave her a nudge to keep her moving. It was all she could do: Move forward. Pray her heart kept beating.
At last, they shuffled into a windowless room. The guards lined the women up with their backs against the far wall. A collection of rusted tools hung on the right wall; the left was hidden by shelving stacked high with clothes and water-stained crates.
The boat guards handed off their paperwork to a group of black-uniformed prison guards. A tall, muscled man entered, and the boat guards tipped their heads to him, saying, “Good evening, Commander Ricci,” in reverential tones as they left.
The Commander’s weathered face and massive stature made him look as immoveable as the cliffs outside. He gestured to the line of women. A younger guard hurried forward, his angular face twisted into a frown. One by one, he unlocked their shackles.
Serina sucked in a breath when the heavy metal rings clinked open. She rubbed her sore wrists. Angry marks marred the smooth skin.
When everyone was unbound, Commander Ricci ordered them to strip. “Put your clothes in a pile in front of you. Slippers too.”
Serina’s hands shook as she unzipped her handmaiden uniform, wrinkled now from the night she’d spent in it, waiting in a small locked room down at the wharf for the prison boat to come in. The dress dropped to the floor.
She’d never been naked in front of a man before. She shivered, her body raw and vulnerable.
The angular-faced guard went down the line again, collecting the clothes as Commander Ricci inspected each prisoner, one by one. Serina had no idea what he was looking for. When it was her turn, he told her to open her mouth, raise her arms, and turn around. But she couldn’t move.
He grabbed Serina’s arm and jerked her forward, his fingers digging into her flesh. “Are you deaf? Open your mouth, raise your arms, and turn around.”
Serina straightened and somehow managed to do as he said. But she couldn’t help the tears that silently spilled down her cheeks.
Had her sister guessed the punishment she was courting, when she’d asked Renzo to teach her to read? When she’d stolen that book? Serina didn’t think so. Nomi had probably thought she was risking a flogging. Maybe a fine.
She’d been so stupid.
By now, most of the other women were crying too. Jacana sidled closer. Serina noticed the girl who’d spoken out on the boat standing a few feet away. She looked a couple years older than Serina and was much thinner, her brown body taut with muscle. The girl kept her gaze pinned to the guards, black eyes blazing. Serina expected someone to reprimand her for her disrespect—or punish her for what she’d done on the boat—but none of the guards paid her any attention. Maybe they didn’t notice.
The narrow-faced guard handed out scratchy towels and a handful of clothes to each of the prisoners. Serina donned the underwear, faded blue pants, and threadbare shirt as quickly as she could. It took far less time to get dressed when there weren’t corsets, endless rows of buttons, fragile lace, or high heels to contend with.
“I’ll call you forward for in-processing,” Commander Ricci said, his craggy face revealing little beyond bland indifference. There was something in his eyes, though, an occasional too-quick move of his head that suggested he was paying close attention.
“Anika Atzo.”
The muscular girl stepped up to the scale. The name fit her, all hard edges. This time, she kept her mouth shut.
When it was Serina’s turn to be weighed and measured, the guard manning the scale let out a low whistle. “It’ll take you a while to starve, flower.”
Serina stared hard at the floor, arms crossed over her chest. Her mother had gone to great lengths so Serina would grow up soft and curvaceous, as befitted a Grace. Even Renzo and her father’s portions of food had been smaller than Serina’s.
The man elbowed another guard. “Want to guess how long she’ll last? An extra bag of rice crisps says—”
“I don’t wager on dead girls,” the younger guard interrupted, speaking with a bored conviction that jarred Serina into looking up. He was tan and clear-eyed, with dark hair that curled up along the rim of his hat as if trying to escape. She could sense his cool appraisal without meeting his gaze. “Send her to the Cave,” he said. “That’d be interesting.”
“Not the Hotel?” the other guard mused.
The young guard shrugged. Serina had no idea what they were talking about, but their words filled her with fear. The guard in charge of the scales checked something off on his paperwork.
“The Cave it is,” he said, waving Serina on.
As Serina followed the other women out of the room, the younger guard’s deep voice murmured, almost gently, “Welcome to Mount Ruin, Dead Girl.”
EIGHT
NOMI
THE DAY AFTER Serina was taken away, Nomi woke long before the sun rose, her sister’s absence dogging her dreams. As she lay in the silent dark, she imagined she was home in the bedroom she’d shared with Serina. Their two narrow beds pushed close together, the pipes hissing gently along the ceiling, Serina’s dresses looking like shadowy dancers clustered in the corner, where Mama had hung them on a wire because there was no closet. But the illusion faded quickly. The shapes hunched in the darkness of this room were all wrong. And Angeline, sleeping in the cot by the door, didn’t hitch an extra breath every few minutes, or shift to her side and sigh the way Serina did. She wouldn’t crawl into bed with Nomi when it was cold or comfort her when she woke from a nightmare.
The question of where Serina was, what punishment she’d endured, was a weight on Nomi’s heart, heavy as a boulder. With every passing hour, it threatened to crush her. If she knew, Nomi could daydream of escape and reunion with her sister.
Nomi shifted in the bed. Ines had said to stop asking questions, to play by the rules. But Nomi had always asked questions, and she’d never wanted to follow the rules. It was why she knew how to read in the first place. It was, presumably, how she’d caught the Heir’s eye.
Surely he knew what had happened to Serina, she realized with a start. And perhaps, if she found the right moment, she could persuade him to tell her. She’d figure out a way to impress him, to become valuable to him.…
She swallowed, panic rising. There was an obvious way. But it was something she couldn’t bear the thought of. Serina may have been prepared to entice the Heir, but Nomi was not. She’d grown up assuming she would be a factory worker or a handmaiden, bound to a job rather than a master. Not having a choice for her future was bad enough, but being forced to please a man.…
She’d made the mistake of thinking she would avoid that fate, at least.
Nomi had resolved to stay as far from the Heir as he let her. Remain unwilling. Force as much distance as she could. Cassia wanted the Heir’s attention, his affection, and she was welcome to it. But what if pleasing him meant discovering what had happened to her sister? Could she do it?
The question twisted through Nomi’s mind without answer.
When the first threads of sun unraveled across the windowsill, Angeline stirred, and their day began. Nomi let the handmaiden help her into a flowing, lily-patterned dress. She sat quietly while Angeline brushed her hair and twisted it up into a nest of braids and ribbon, accented with several silver butterfly pins. Nomi looked into the mirror and frowned, feeling as if she were facing a stranger.
She’d spent so much time looking at Serina’s face, and little time contemplating her own. But now Nomi could see, with brutal clarity, all the ways Serina had been prepared for this life and how she had not. The dullness of her hair compared to Serina’s sleek strands. The way her wide, dark-lashed eyes looked combative rather than demure.
She didn’t belong here.
When Nomi was as polished as Angeline could make her, the handmaiden led her to a long wicker table on a terrace overlooking the ocean. Maris and Cassia were already seated at one end, picking delicately at their plates, piled high with colorful fruit and soft
cheeses. Baskets of cornettos dotted the table.
The Superior’s Graces took up the rest of the long table. The Superior didn’t seem to have a specific standard of beauty: Some Graces had dark skin, others ghostly white. They had brown hair, blond, black. Curly, straight. The women ranged in age from midforties to a year or two older than Maris and Cassia. The Superior had been collecting his Graces for a long time.
At seventeen, Nomi was easily the youngest here. You had to be eighteen to be considered as a Grace. But those were the Superior’s rules—apparently his son could break them.
If only I had the same privilege, she thought mutinously, lowering herself into the empty chair beside Maris. She reached for a pastry without enthusiasm. Cassia was turned toward the girls sitting on her other side, listening avidly as they gossiped about the Superior.
“But the foot massages, Rosario!” one of the younger Graces was saying.
A woman with deep brown skin and tight curls, presumably Rosario, shuddered. “It’s like rubbing blocks of ice wrapped in rice paper.”
Nomi glanced at the woman with guarded interest. Rosario was the Grace who knew everyone’s secrets.
“Is the Superior very sick?” Cassia asked, inserting herself into the conversation.
Rosario shrugged delicately. “He’s sick, but he’s stubborn. I’d say there’s still life in him yet.”
“What happens to all of you when he dies?” Maris asked, her voice expressionless.
Rosario shot a look at the girl across from her. “Cheerful, this one.”
Nomi glanced at Maris. Maybe it was an odd question, but not an unreasonable one. The last Superior had died before she was born; no one ever talked about what had happened to his Graces.
“Do you know?” Maris asked, not letting it go. “Will you stay in the palace, or be sent home?”
Rosario shrugged, but a shadow passed across her features. “It will be the Heir’s choice. When his father dies, he will decide what becomes of us.”
Grace and Fury Page 5