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Briony moved to the bathroom and filled the tub in a daze. She would try in the evening, when the house was asleep.

She would spend all night with the Journal page, draining it dry of information. Her chest burned with the possibilities.

***

At midnight, Briony stood barefoot in a clean dress, twisting her fingers and watching the clock move too slowly.

She waited a handful of minutes before opening the door and slipping out.

Following the same path Serena had walked back with her, Briony took the small staircase instead of the grand one in the entry hall.

She passed the library and paused only a moment before deciding her first priority was learning what was happening outside these walls.

The shadows of Hearst Hall taunted her every step, and the dim sconces seemed to flicker once she’d gotten close to them. She paused at the entry hall that she’d need to pass through to get to the other wing. The glass dome in the ceiling cast moonlight in odd angles over the walls and statues.

On quick feet, she silently skittered over the marble. It was easy to find the kitchen again. She made sure she was alone before grabbing a forgotten candlestick on a shelf and tilting the candle’s wick to one of the barely lit sconces.

Briony hurried to the page on the wall, finding that day’s news still up with Sammy’s pictures. Vindecci himself had created the Journal nearly six hundred years ago to connect people all over the continent by sending news and information directly onto each household’s page.

Touching her fingertip to the page, she whispered to the thick parchment, asking it to show her the news on the date of the eclipse—the day Rory had died. The ink drained and re-formed.

She read page after page of Bomardi propaganda, trying to find the cracks in the celebrations and successes.

She skimmed the passages about the burning of Rory’s body, unable to read the details, and focused instead on looking for three names: Sammy Meers, General Billium Meers, and Finola Rosewood.

The day of the auction was reported on with information matching the list the house had given her.

She noticed that Sammy Meers’s fate was not mentioned in the Journal , either, despite him being the first to be auctioned.

Briony’s skin tightened with a realization. Sammy had been on the stage when Larissa had attacked that guard and started the scuffle backstage. He must have escaped in the chaos. She breathed deeply, thanking the waters that something good had come out of that failed attempt.

The first mention of Sammy Meers came eight days after the auction. Briony counted the dates in her head, remembering that she had just come from visiting Mallow with Toven two nights before.

brEAK-IN AT BURKIN ESTATE

Del Burkin is dead this morning after a horrible tragedy at his estate last night. This coordinated and ruthless slaughter took place in the middle of the night and resulted in the kidnapping of Burkin’s heartsprings.

Sammy Meers, escaped Eversun prisoner and known rabble-rouser, along with an unknown assailant skilled in “cloaking,” or mind-control magic, killed Del Burkin in his bed and absconded with his two heartsprings.

Briony’s fingers curled around the edge of the counter in desperation.

Her eyes flew over the words again and again.

Del Burkin was somewhere on the line, wasn’t he?

Someone’s successor, she thought. The unknown assailant had to be Finola.

Briony knew no one else on the run who was skilled enough in cloaking to be of note.

But one other thought swirled in her mind: Burkin had bought Didion and Velicity Punt at the auction.

Sammy, Finola, Didion, and Velicity … Her throat clicked on hope as she swallowed it down. With Sammy’s wily scheming, Finola’s connections and skills, Didion’s loyal bravery, and Velicity’s tenacious fight, Briony would put money on that team in a heartbeat.

Her fingers were shaking as possibility bloomed in her chest. The rebellion was building.

She skipped ahead in the dates, finding another mention of Sammy and a description of Velicity: dark-brown skin, missing left forearm .

She pressed her eyes closed, sucking in a short breath. The tattoo. If Briony cut off her arm, she could get around the tattoo.

Briony tried to imagine it. Tried to think of Velicity at the boundary line of some gothic structure, staring at Sammy until she gave him the go-ahead to mutilate her.

Sammy and Finola would have killed Burkin first, thinking that would do it—that the heartspring would be free if her master was dead.

Another piece of information to file away: The death of the master didn’t free the prisoner.

Had Didion cut off his arm as well? Her eyes welled with tears.

And did they have their magic back after Burkin died? Briony searched for mentions of a collar on Sammy or Velicity in their descriptions but found nothing.

Briony considered her own options. She could steal a kitchen knife right now and hack her way through her own flesh and bone.

Where would she go—armless and bleeding without magic? How would she find Sammy and Finola? Surely there had to be another way around the tattoo that didn’t involve putting herself in such a vulnerable position.

Briony took a deep breath and whispered, “Next page, please,” to the Journal .

The sconces flared to life in the kitchen.

She whipped around and found Orion Hearst leaning in the doorway, his shrewd eyes on her.

“Ah,” he said. “It’s always so disappointing to find vermin in the kitchen.”