Then a sharp, pain-filled scream carved a hole into the black, rising from beyond her cocoon. Serina’s breath froze. The sound slid into an agonized moan and petered out. For a second, there was silence. Then she heard the unmistakable, horrifying sound of applause.
TEN
NOMI
IN THE HALLWAY outside the Heir’s chambers, Nomi leaned back against the heavy door, the curve of a leaping fish digging into her spine. His expression as she’d left the room haunted her. She tried to steady her breathing.
Ines hadn’t waited for her. Nomi turned down the hall in the direction she’d come, but somehow she never found the short flight of stairs they’d ascended. She kept walking, the impulse to get away overwhelming, even though she had no idea how to return to the Graces’ chambers.
The hallway eventually ended at a wall of glass, some partitions pulled back to reveal a wide terrace overlooking the ocean. A cool breeze slipped into the hallway, caressing Nomi’s cheeks. Drawn forward by the soothing wind, she approached the marble balustrade, gripped the hard stone in her cold hands, and closed her eyes.
Homesickness ate her hollow. She missed her mother’s soft voice, her father’s gruff pride. Renzo’s mischievous support of her little rebellions. For years, she’d been his shadow, and he’d been her voice of hope. But most of all, she missed Serina. Nomi had always known she’d have to say goodbye to her parents and her brother someday. But she and Serina were supposed to stay together.
“You look like you need some time to yourself,” a young man’s voice said, “so I am loathe to interrupt, but I suspect you are lost.”
Nomi’s eyes snapped open. Mortified, she stepped back from the railing, the world of the palazzo rushing over her, the glare of late-afternoon sunlight bleaching out the soft glow of memory.
In a cushioned chaise a few feet away, the Heir’s younger brother lounged. Her eyes immediately went to the book in his hands, navy leather with the title, The Feasts and Follies of War, embossed in gold. Curiosity flared through her, until she realized Asa was waiting for her to speak.
Flustered, she backed away, curtsying awkwardly as she went. “I’m s-sorry to disturb you, Your Eminence,” she stuttered. “I did get a bit turned around. I’ll leave immediately.”
Asa stood up and followed her, the book still cradled in his hand. “Wait, wait,” he said, reaching out his other hand. “I’ll help you find your way.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself, Your Eminence. I’m sure I can—”
“It’s no trouble at all,” he interrupted with a smile.
With bowed head, Nomi followed him into the hallway. The Superior’s second son was as tall as his brother but not as muscular, and his shaggy hair gave him a more relaxed air, very different from his brother’s brooding intensity. The back of his neck was tanned, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors.
“You’re one of the new Graces, aren’t you?” he asked as they walked.
“Yes, Your Eminence. My name is Nomi Tessaro.”
“Ah, Nomi. Of course,” Asa said, shooting a look over his shoulder at her. She couldn’t be sure, but there seemed to be a new interest in his expression. A sharpening. “You came to the palazzo as a handmaiden, right?”
She stiffened, expecting derision. “I did, Your Eminence.”
“This must be very different for you,” he said kindly. Her tense muscles eased a fraction. “Where are you from?”
“I’m from Lanos.”
He slowed until they were walking side by side down the gilded hall. She lowered her gaze to the marble floor. “I remember visiting the mountains north of Lanos as a child,” he said, his voice softening. “It was the first time I ever saw snow.”
“I’ve always loved the way snow can transform things,” Nomi said. “Old, broken buildings, dirty streets—the world can become bright and pristine in the space of an afternoon.”
Asa’s voice turned rueful. “I admit, I was more interested in making snowballs than admiring the scenery. Though in my defense, I was seven.”
Nomi smiled at her feet. “Completely understandable, Your Eminence.”
“And how are you adjusting to life here?” he asked. “Are you satisfied with your new role?”
Her face fell, and the fleeting moment of connection was broken. She wondered if these questions were a test, like everything else here seemed to be. “The palazzo is beautiful, and I am very happy to be here,” she said dutifully, even as her cheeks flushed with anger.
He glanced at her again. “It must be difficult, with your sister gone.”
Nomi’s breath froze at the mention of Serina. Her feet froze too, tripping on the hem of her flowing dress. Automatically, she reached out to steady herself, and gripped Asa’s arm. He turned to face her, steadying her. For an instant, they stood still in the middle of the hallway, holding each other.
Nomi let go of his arm and stepped back, face hot. “Pardon me.”
Asa cleared his throat. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have brought up your sister. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He looked so much like his brother, but the features that looked hard on Malachi were softened on Asa. Nomi leaned a breath closer. Maybe she could ask him—
A door ahead of them swung open, and Ines emerged.
Asa turned to face the Head Grace. Nomi’s question died in her throat.
Ines curtsied, her eyes narrowing as she noticed Nomi standing beside Asa. “Hello, Your Eminence.”
“I found your wayward Grace,” Asa said cheerfully, erasing any tension lingering in the hall. He stepped out of Nomi’s way.
“I’m sorry,” Nomi said, keeping her head down. “I got lost.”
Ines nodded and ushered Nomi inside. But Nomi slowed, glanced over her shoulder, watching until Asa rounded the corner and disappeared from view. She ignored Ines’s stern look as she headed for her room, deep in her own thoughts.
Maybe the Heir wasn’t the only way to find out about Serina. As she thought of Asa again, the hint of a smile curled her lips.
ELEVEN
SERINA
THE RED-HAIRED WOMAN from Oracle’s crew won the fight. When Serina finally opened her eyes, the women around her were pumping their fists in the air, and the rest were standing silently as their leaders dragged the fallen fighters from the amphitheater.
“Are they—are they dead?” Serina whispered.
Jacana swallowed, her small face ghostly pale in the torchlight. “Most of them.”
Cliff came to collect the new girls, leading them out of the amphitheater with the others. She held a flickering torch aloft to light their way.
“What was that?” Serina hissed as they walked. Her hands shook, and her teeth chattered. What she’d just seen, what she’d heard…
Cliff shot her a glance. “There isn’t enough food for everyone. The Superior doesn’t care if we live or die.” She spit into the darkness. “So we fight.”
Jacana whimpered.
“Fight? For food?” Serina asked, her voice cracking. “Why do the guards allow it?”
“Allow it? They’re the ones who started it. The guards watch and cheer, even bet on who will win.” She bared her teeth, her voice bitter. “We are their sport.”
Serina remembered the Superior’s dignitaries passing her around on the dance floor. Not caring who she was or what she said as long as she smiled. It hadn’t bothered her then. “But this—”
“There are five camps on this island. Whenever a boat comes in, each camp must choose someone to send to the ring. Only the winner’s crew gets rations.” Cliff climbed over a broken boulder. “Tonight, our champion won. That means we eat well tomorrow. The rest of the crews will have to scavenge the island for whatever they can find until the next haul of prisoners arrives.”
Serina swallowed back a wave of revulsion. “How do the guards decide who wins?”
Cliff raised a brow, as if the answer were obvious. “Didn’t you see? The winner is the one who lives.”
&n
bsp; “We have to kill each other?” Jacana’s voice broke in, a high, terrified squeak.
Cliff didn’t spare her a glance. “Cowards can submit. Be exiled from their crews. But most of those who fight and lose prefer death. It’s quicker than starving.”
Serina’s eyes burned with unshed tears. When she had opened Nomi’s book, she’d done it so innocently. A quick peek at a part of her childhood, a memory of her brother to stave off homesickness and grief. A tiny moment, before she hid the book and lectured her sister on her recklessness. Serina had never imagined what she risked. What Nomi risked by learning to read. As Serina stumbled up the path, the screams of dying women echoing in her ears, she had never wanted anything more than to see that book of legends burn.
Cliff and the new prisoners followed Oracle’s crew up a twisting, rocky trail that led through the scorched remains of a forest. The occasional gnarled cypress pushed its way out of the ruined earth, and tenacious ivy snaked across chunks of stone from what might have once been a road. The only other plant to find purchase was a hardy grass that sprouted in little clumps across the black volcanic rock, rustling mournfully in the wind.
“Where are we going?” Gia asked. She kept twisting her hair in her hands, as if desperate for something to hold on to.
Serina tried to catch her breath, her legs flaming.
Cliff didn’t slow her pace. “We live in a cave. Well, a lava tube. The outer layers cooled while the lava still flowed, leaving an empty space behind.”
“That doesn’t sound safe.” Gia grimaced. Her deeply tanned skin and sun-bleached hair suggested she came from a southern city, or maybe one of the nomadic fishing families that lived on boats along the western coast.
“It isn’t,” Cliff snapped.
“Then why do you live there?” Serina asked.
“Oracle doesn’t want us to be safe.” Cliff shot a glare over her shoulder. “She wants us to be tough. The tube is a terrible place to live, which is exactly the point. No more questions. Get moving.”
The dark pressed in around them. Cliff’s flickering torch only illuminated so much, and Serina frequently stumbled. Jacana, for all her timidity, tore up the path quickly.
Eventually, they reached a gaping mouth of stone. The crew disappeared into the cave. The new prisoners hesitated at the entrance, sagging with exhaustion. The air smelled like a burnt match. A red glow seeped into the sky from the hills in the center of the island.
Theodora stared at the tunnel and shook her head, eyes wide with horror. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Gia yanked on her arm. “You want to stay out here alone all night?”
“It’s harder without a torch,” Cliff said over her shoulder. She didn’t wait.
As Serina entered the cave, bitter dust coated her tongue. The torchlight flashed madly against the walls. Even so, it was too dark to see more than the pale form of Jacana in front of her.
At last, a brighter flicker of firelight appeared to guide their way. The tunnel ballooned up and outward, creating a natural room. Women sat on rusted chairs in the center or sprawled on pallets lining the curved walls. At the far end, a fire had been lit beneath a large, ragged hole.
There were no guards. No men at all. Serina had never seen so many women in one place in her entire life.
Oracle walked over to the new girls. When she stood before them, she crossed her hands over her chest. The noise in the cave echoed to nothing. “Everyone has a moment here,” the leader said, her voice carrying, “when they stand at the edge of a cliff and wonder if it will be easier to jump.” She stared at each of the new prisoners, one after another. “Let me save you the internal debate. It is easier.”
For a long moment, the words hung in the air, depressing and inescapable. Serina swallowed down the lump forming in her throat.
“Here on Mount Ruin, we have to earn our rations,” Oracle continued. “And everyone is hungry. So jump if you have to, but don’t expect to be fed unless you work. Unless you fight. The guards control the island, but you control your own survival. Listen, learn, and remember this one thing: Every rule you were ever taught in Viridia—about being quiet, modest, humble, weak—won’t help you here. Here, strength is the only currency.”
Serina had been trained to be soft. Pliant. Her grace had been her greatest strength. Now it was useless. She was useless. No one needed her harp playing, or dancing, or embroidery here.
Oracle’s gaze found her, that strange milky eye seemingly reading every terrified thought. Almost as if she spoke straight to Serina, Oracle added, “You must be as strong as this prison, as strong as the stone and ocean that hems you in. You are brick and barbed wire. You are iron.”
On another day, Serina might have wept. But she had no tears left, no energy for sorrow. This was her life now. Somehow, she would have to learn how to survive.
Serina woke, stiff with panic. A phantom weight pressed down on her, heavy as the rocks above her head. She sat up and tore at her shirt, trying to free her lungs from their cage.
A hand clamped onto her shoulder. “It’s a dream. Relax. You’re fine.”
The strange voice shattered the haze of sleep that still clung to her. Suddenly, with a great gasp, she could breathe again.
Torches had been left burning at intervals throughout the main cavern, breaking up the darkness into waxy orange blocks of light and shadow. Serina tried to get her bearings in the low light.
“The tunnel makes some people claustrophobic. Me, I like it.” The raspy voice belonged to the woman on the pallet beside Serina’s. “I spent ten years living in the windowless basement of a powerful man’s house, dreading the sound of his key turning in the lock. I’ve become accustomed to the dark.”
“How did you end up here?” Serina asked shakily as she tried to ground herself in the here and now.
“The man took my child.” The woman’s gnomish face turned grim, her eyes dark holes the dim light didn’t touch. She held her hands up, fingers curved into claws. “So I took his eyes.”
Serina gripped the edges of her mat, trying to keep her expression neutral. “Oh.”
“They call me Claw,” the woman said, holding out a hand. “Here, we earn our names.”
“Serina.” As she shook hands, her stomach balked, and sweat broke out along the back of her neck. She suddenly couldn’t bear the weight of the rock above her head, the press of so many strangers. She had to get out. “Where’s the privy?” she asked hoarsely.
“Out the tunnel, beyond the steam vents to the left.” Claw nodded her head toward the opening on the other side of the banked fire.
Serina scrambled to her feet and crossed the length of the cavern on shaky legs.
The tunnel wasn’t lit, except for a faint gleam of dawn that filtered through several small openings where the tunnel had collapsed—a fact Serina tried not to dwell on. She stuck close to one wall, running her hand along the ridged rock to keep herself steady. The ground was uneven and snagged at her useless slippers, igniting fire in her blistered feet. She’d noticed a few of the women wearing boots and wondered what they’d done to procure them.
Away from the others, she thought she’d have more space to breathe, but the lava tube still hemmed her in, filled with the memories of so many women who’d come here frightened and alone, just like her. Who’d come here and fought and died.
Eventually, the tunnel opened up, its rock floor crumbling into grassy, vine-threaded gravel. Squat red-edged aloe plants broke through the rocky ground, and scrubby citrus trees lined a small patch of woods. Serina was pretty sure this was how they’d entered the cave the night before, but it’d been too dark to notice any of the details.
To her left, steam billowed from the ground, turning silver-gray in the morning light. Heavy, humid air replaced the cool damp of the cave. She picked her way over the rocky ground. She’d never relieved herself outside before. It was certainly a change from the creaky pipes of their house in Lanos, or the airy, marble-tiled bathrooms
of the palazzo.
When Serina was finished, she clambered back over the rocks.
A squeak and rattle broke the quiet of the morning. Serina retreated to the mouth of the cave as a guard came into view pushing a rusty cart. He stopped in the clearing between the rows of citrus trees, took off his hat, and wiped sweat from his forehead. It was the young guard who’d suggested she be placed in the Cave.
Serina looked around for Oracle, for someone else who might know what was happening, what to do, but no one materialized from the shadows of the lava tube. Automatically, she ran a hand along her greasy, tangled hair and tried to straighten her shirt.
“Ah, Dead Girl,” the guard said, noticing her. Serina chafed under the callous nickname. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, instead staring at the dark, unruly hair curling up along the edges of his cap. He leaned back against his cart and crossed his arms, his gray shirt streaked with sweat. “How are you settling in?”
It would have been a polite question demanding a polite answer, if they were in the palazzo. But Serina wasn’t in the palazzo, and last night she’d watched girls fight to the death while guards like this one cheered. Nomi wouldn’t smile and be polite. So Serina didn’t either.
“How does one settle into hell, I wonder?” she asked, venom coating her voice. “And why should I? As you’ve made quite clear, I’ll be dead and gone soon enough.”
He nodded with something like appreciation. “You’ve got a little of your fire back. That’s good.”
Thrown off balance, Serina snapped, “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “A lot of the girls who come here are already angry, ready to fight. But others need help. I figured if you had any chance at all, it’d be with the Cave. And here you are, a day in, already standing up for yourself.”
“So, I’m rude to you and now you think I’m ready to fight?” Serina put her hands on her hips. The morning sun beat down on her, scalding the exposed skin of her arms.
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