(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.