Grace and Fury (Grace and Fury #1)(16)
“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.”