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“No! I didn’t.” Treecie shook her head violently, face shading crimson while her neck went white as alabaster. “I would never. I liked—”

“Liar!” The roar that burst from Mollandra was far louder than any noise she’d made before and surprised her as much as the rest of them. Nearly everyone took a step back. “Death challenge. You choose the battle.” Mollandra rubbed her neck.

“Get out.” Instructor Akki waved them away as if she had no time for their foolishness.

Mollandra turned towards the woman, who now had her back to them once more as she reached to heave Meery from her coffin. The water soaking Mollandra’s robes had begun to cool, already losing the heat of Einsa’s last fury. She took a step towards the instructor, and again Tmanga caught her arm while Sharp only broadened her grin. Mollandra shook her head. Bek’s madness had infected her but she wouldn’t go down like Bek. The Academy had more to teach her before she could teach it a lesson of her own.

The acolytes hurried away, muttering among themselves. It was a bad month if they lost a single member of the class. To have lost two in a day with a third promised was high drama.

Mollandra kept her eye on Treecie. She was the type to try to end the death challenge before it even started. They all were, to be fair. But killing a classmate was a surefire way to get the rest of the class to band against you. If Sharp, for example, were to start working her way through Year Three with sword in hand on the floor of the Wound Garden, one death challenge after the next, then the whole class would rise against her. It was the only sensible course of action. Thus, Mollandra had given Treecie warning and the choice of both weapons and ground. She couldn’t afford to be seen as a general threat. This was a personal matter, and Treecie’s end would be the end of it. This was also the reason that Mollandra had murdered Lucia in secret on the first night and had never admitted it to anyone, not even to Bek or Einsa.

The walk from the dungeons to the dorm was a long one, despite what some said about the gap between sleep and death being so slender. Mollandra lagged at the rear of the group. The fact of Einsa’s death was a large, sharp-cornered thing that wouldn’t sit comfortably in her chest, and every time she tried to wrestle it into a better place it made her hurt. The pain leaked from her eyes just as it had with Bek, though there she had managed to reach the privacy of her covers before allowing the agony to have its way with her.

“You’re with us now.” Tmanga fell back to walk with her.

Sharp joined them, pressing her habitual smile into a flat line. “Einsa was all right. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Mollandra kept her head down, refusing to comment on the implied new dynamic. Tmanga shared what Einsa had had, a belief in herself that ran too deep to need to be stated or shown. But belief alone wouldn’t carry anyone to the end of the Academy’s cruel games.

“You shouldn’t have let Treecie choose,” Tmanga said. “She’s strongest where you’re weakest.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Mollandra kept her stinging eyes on the floor, safe with Sharp and Tmanga at her side. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Ha!” Sharp’s laugh sounded hollow in the vaults. “It really doesn’t. Nothing does.”

Einsa had mattered to Mollandra, though she had never said so. She didn’t say so now either. Sharp skipped along the surfaces of the world. Perhaps it was just a defence to keep from hurting, or it might be that was all she was. All of them were broken in some way or other. If they hadn’t been when they arrived, after three years they were more fracture than flesh. That seemed to be the Academy’s recipe: grind them down and build something new from the pieces.

“Are we going to talk about what happened?” Sharp leaned in, still kneeling on her own neighbouring bed.

“She drowned.” Mollandra didn’t have any more to say about it.

“She exploded!” Sharp mimed the eruption of water with both hands. “What in all the hells was that?”

“Magic that her mother taught her,” Tmanga said. “Something the Kindnesses know.”

“She should have used it earlier.” Sharp shook her head. “I’d be using it all the time.”

“It didn’t look like very safe magic,” Tmanga said.

“So?” Sharp gave her a puzzled look, turning to Mollandra for support.

“She loved us.” Mollandra shrugged helplessly. “She would never let that loose with friends around her.”

“She—” And for once Sharp had the grace to hold her tongue.

She would never have made it to the last three. Mollandra knew what Sharp had been about to say, and was grateful that she had not said it.

“I’ll take first watch tonight.” Tmanga settled on Einsa’s bed.

Mollandra shook her head. “It’s not like I’ll be sleeping.”

Tmanga shrugged, running her fingers down the pink scar that jagged across her brown cheek. Mollandra had thought them all fractured, but wherever her fault lines ran, Tmanga alone kept them totally hidden, as if her scar stood in for all of them, a visible representation of what must run through her soul. “Asleep or awake, I know you won’t be watching.”

And so Mollandra surrendered to her pillow and lay in the stillness and the quiet. Later there would be screams. No night went by without the nightmares calling on at least one girl. After the coffins it would surely be more than one.

Einsa filled the blindness of Mollandra’s closed eyes. Einsa floating. Einsa scowling. Einsa frowning at Mollandra’s weakness. Einsa’s rough smile. This last one fastened Mollandra’s jaw, so tight that her teeth hurt and the muscles sang, but at least it kept the larger pain at bay, stopped it bursting from her throat. Finally Bek came, standing by Einsa’s side as Einsa wrung the wetness from her hair. Her presence made Mollandra feel both better and worse. Happy for the comfort Bek offered their friend. Sad for the full scope of her loss being on display.

Until that first night under the Academy’s roof, Mollandra had believed her life to be a worthless one. She hadn’t expected any recognition from Bek, nor that the girl would offer her sanctuary. But despite all that Mollandra had done, Bek had seen her and called her to her side. Einsa she had not trusted at all. Mollandra had expected cruel tricks from the others, ploys to lower her guard, as a prelude to murder in the dark. But somehow Bek’s open smile and Einsa’s gruff disapproval had made her hope.