(Gianna's POV)

I woke to pipes.

Water moving through the walls, then footsteps overhead, then voices-muffled by the floorboards, shapeless but warm. Someone laughed. The ceiling gave nothing else away.

No window. No way to know the time.

There was a tray on the small table. Betty must have come while I was out. Cold porridge, a cup of water, a piece of bread with its edges gone hard. I ate all of it. The mines teach you that first-eat what's in front of you, don't ask about the temperature, don't ask about the taste.

Under the bread, folded flat and pressed against the tray's edge, was a small piece of paper. I almost missed it-the same grey as the tray's lining. I unfolded it. One line, written in a small, careful hand I didn't recognize: a name I didn't know, followed by a date two years ago.

I looked at it for a moment. Then I folded it back along its original creases and slid it flat inside my waistband. Whoever had put it there had done so carefully enough that I hadn't noticed until I looked. I didn't know yet what the name meant. But someone in this house had decided I needed to have it.

A set of clothes had been folded beside the tray. Grey work uniform. The kind worn by Omega servants in the Pack house.

I changed out of the prison uniform. The trouser legs were too long. I rolled them twice. The sleeves came just past my wrists.

Nobody had measured me. They'd guessed at an Omega's size, and guessed close enough.

Three knocks. Short, evenly spaced. Not Betty's knock.

"Come in."

The woman in the doorway had silver-cut hair and grey eyes and the kind of stillness that comes from training. Black uniform, Rivers emblem at the collar. Her gaze went around the room once-bed, table, tray, where I was sitting-then settled on my face.

"I'm Nina. Assigned to your daily care."

"Whose order?"

A half-beat pause. "Luna Elizabeth's."

"Suit yourself," I said. "But if you're going to stand in the doorway, at least don't block the-" I stopped. "Never mind. There's no light to block."

Nina's eyes dropped. She was looking at my hands. The grey veining, the twisted nails. Something moved across her mouth and was gone.

"Elder Madelyn wants to see you," she said. "I'm to take you up."

We hadn't reached Madelyn's room when Elizabeth stepped out from a side door.

Like she'd been waiting.

She looked at me. The grey uniform, the rolled trouser legs, the mine-issue shoes still damp from the night before. Something at the corner of her mouth pulled tight.

"You're wearing that to see Madelyn?"

"It's what you had sent down."

"I told Betty to bring you a dress." Her brow drew in. "You won't even put on a dress? You want Madelyn to see you like this-"

She stopped. Her eyes finished the sentence.

I said nothing.

Elizabeth breathed in. "Madelyn is not well. She doesn't need to see you like this and feel worse. Can't you-" A pause. "Can't you give her a little peace of mind?"

"I'll give her peace of mind," I said. "I'll tell her the food in the mines was good, the beds were soft, the guards treated us well. Is that the version you want her to hear?"

The color left Elizabeth's face.

She didn't answer.

Instead she reached out and took my wrist. Pulling me toward the side room, toward whatever dress she had in mind.

Her fingers closed exactly over the silver scars.

My whole arm jerked. I wrenched my wrist back before I could think about it. Elizabeth's hand caught my sleeve instead-and pulled.

The sleeve came up to my elbow.

She went still.

The scars ran from my wrist to the inside of my elbow. Crosshatched, dense, the silver dust settled into the lines giving them a dull metallic sheen. Some sections weren't skin anymore-more like membrane grown over a burn, translucent enough to see the veins underneath.

Elizabeth's face moved through three things. Shock. A flinch she couldn't stop. Then something that arranged itself into grief.

Nina stood two steps back, her eyes fixed on my arm. Her fingers were trembling at her side.

I pulled the sleeve down. Slowly. No hurry.

"I know your dress is beautiful, but that's exactly why I said it's not necessary." I said. "Not for sympathy. Because it makes people uncomfortable."

The corridor was quiet for a long time.

Julian had been at the far end of the corridor the whole time. Leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He'd seen all of it-Elizabeth's grip, the sleeve, what was underneath.

He didn't come closer.

When Elizabeth stood there not knowing what to say, it was Julian who spoke. From the other end of the hall, not moving.

"Stop standing around. Madelyn's waiting."

No mention of the scars. No shock. No anger on my behalf.

It wasn't a surprise. After he learned I wasn't a real Rivers, he'd become Charlotte's brother without looking back. He was the one who believed her, who swung the whip, who kicked me down the stairs. Today's silence was almost generous by comparison.

I looked at him. His emerald eyes held mine for less than a second. Then he pushed off the wall and walked ahead toward Madelyn's room.

Elizabeth went after him, said something low. He didn't turn around.

"This way, Miss Gianna," Nina said quietly.

I followed. My left leg dragged across the stone floor, the fabric making a sound with every step.

I stopped outside Madelyn's door.

It was open a crack. Voices inside-Madelyn's, thin but clear. And Charlotte's.

"...when I went to bring her home, she'd lost so much weight. I couldn't stop thinking about her. She didn't want to get in my car-I understand, she probably wasn't ready to forgive us yet..."

I stood in the hallway and listened.

Every word was true. Charlotte had gone to the mine. I had refused the car. None of it was a lie.

All of it was a lie.

Madelyn's voice: "How does she look?"

"She was wearing her prison clothes..." Charlotte's voice caught. "I had Betty send her a dress, but it seems like she didn't put it on..."

Ever since I became a fake, the only person in this family whose attitude toward me remained unchanged was my grandmother. Back then, when I was falsely accused and exiled to the mines, only she believed in my innocence and ran about trying to help clear my name, until she fell ill and could no longer leave her bed.

Throughout these four years, she was my only motivation to gain freedom. I wanted to survive, to see her again, to check if she was doing well.

I pushed the door open.

Grandma was in the chair by the bed. She had become mostly bones and gold eyes. When those eyes found me, they lit up-then dimmed-then went wet.

Charlotte stood at Madelyn's shoulder, one hand resting there. She turned when the door opened. Her expression arranged itself into something careful and apologetic.