Grace and Fury (Grace and Fury #1)(68)

He looked up at Serina, and for a moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire.

“I’m glad you thought I was worth saving,” Serina said.

“I think every woman is worth saving.” Val’s lip quirked. “You’re just especially needy.”

Serina bumped his knee with hers, as she might have done to Renzo when he teased her. But the heat that moved through her belly when she looked at him was wholly different. Val threw his stick into the flames, sending up sparks.

Serina’s hands tightened into fists. She shouldn’t need saving. None of them should. “Commander Ricci knows he’s got a precarious system,” she said. “That’s why he wants to use me as a lesson to the others. If we were to band together, stand against him…”

“A lot of you would die,” Val said.

“Not enough to stop us,” Serina replied. She never would have expected, before she’d come here, that her thoughts would ever run to blood. To revolution.

“Not enough to stop you,” Val echoed.

She looked over at him in surprise. “You agree with me?”

He met her gaze squarely, the firelight warming his skin. “I think the women in this prison—in this country—will rise up eventually. My father used to say that oppression isn’t a finite state. It’s a weight that is carried until it becomes too heavy, and then it is thrown off. Not without struggle, not without pain, but he believed the weight would always, always be fought and overcome. He wasn’t the only one trying to change things.”

Serina thought of Nomi and Renzo, how they balked at the strict dictates of their lives. She took a deep breath. “My sister can read.”

She’d never said it out loud before.

Val leaned toward her.

“Nomi convinced our brother to teach her, when we were growing up. They hid it from our parents, but I knew. Nomi read to me all the time. They asked if I wanted to learn, but I said no.” She swallowed, thinking back to those days, the secrets they shared. “I wish I’d let them.”

“Why didn’t you want to learn?” Val threw another stick into the fire.

“I was training to become a Grace—there was already so much to learn. And… it scared me. It was my duty to uphold the Superior’s ideal image of a woman. Learning to read was in direct opposition to that.” Serina looked down at her scratched hands and deeply tanned skin. She hardly recognized who she’d become.

“I saw your intake papers,” Val said. “I assumed you were a Grace. And your crime was listed as reading. How did that happen?”

“It was a mistake. Nomi had a book”—even now she couldn’t admit that Nomi had stolen it—“a book we’d loved as children. I was holding it, reciting the story from memory, when the Head Grace entered our room. She assumed I was reading, and then everything happened so fast.”

She hadn’t told anyone any of this. Not even Jacana. Oracle knew her sister had been chosen, but she’d never asked Serina why she’d been sent to Mount Ruin. Tears ran down Serina’s cheeks, and her breath hitched in her throat. “I don’t know if I saved her,” she said. “I wanted to help her, but leaving her in the palace, alone, with the Superior and his son… I may have secured her a future far worse than mine.”

Val reached out a tentative hand and rubbed her back.

Val’s comforting touch undid her. She leaned into him and he scooted closer, until they were sitting side by side, his arms wrapped around her. She laid her head on his chest and cried. He hushed her softly, like a child. The last few weeks flashed before her eyes, nightmare after nightmare, too horrifying to be real.

Eventually, she calmed. Her eyes felt gritty and swollen, and her head still ached. Outside the cave, the sky was edging into dawn. Her whole body hurt, bone-deep.

How was it that homesickness could be more painful than a bullet wound?





THIRTY-FOUR



NOMI


“I CAN’T BELIEVE the Heir’s birthday is tomorrow,” Maris said as she and Nomi strolled through the small garden near the palazzo. Ines had allowed them some fresh air; they were both testy and restless, with the celebration the next day. “I hope Cassia gets her wish.”

Nomi hoped so too. Tomorrow would either end with Asa as the new Heir or with her at the whim of his brother, and Serina’s future hung in the balance.

Our plan will work, she reassured herself for the hundredth time. She wished she could see Asa again before everything was set in motion. But he was in Bellaqua today. Maybe speaking to Renzo at this very moment.

And she was still waiting for Malachi’s summons. What would happen if he didn’t request her presence before tomorrow? Asa had seemed so sure that he would. If she wasn’t able to place the letter in his chambers, everything fell into question. The letter was the key to linking Malachi to their plot. Without that letter, there was no proof the Heir had anything to do with it. And then other suspects would be sought.

Nomi’s stomach clenched.

“We’ll survive this,” Maris said, misinterpreting Nomi’s look of concern. “As the years pass and he chooses more Graces, we’ll see him less. We’ll get a little more space.” Maris wore her grief like an iron collar, always there, always dragging at her. She’d told Nomi she felt responsible for whatever had happened to Helena, and the not knowing ate at her every day.