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I get up and motion to Sil to follow me. She does, without question, and I take her to Lucien’s workshop.

“Well,” she says after several long moments of silence. She shakes her head. “If anyone were to have a place like this, it would be him.”

“I think maybe there are things here that could help the Society. Or the new government, whatever it will be called.” I run my fingers across the prototype of Annabelle’s slate. When I glance up, Sil is looking at me strangely.

“You know,” she says, walking over to the bookshelves and peering at the various titles. “I’ve known Lucien for almost five years. The first day I met him, I blew him off my porch with Air.”

“You did?” I say.

“What would you do if a lady-in-waiting showed up at your front door? In a place you thought no one could find?” Sil says, but her mocking is gentle. “He didn’t like me much after that. Of course, we had to get along, for Azalea’s sake.”

“I know,” I say.

“But Azalea never brought us together the way you did,” Sil says. I stare at her, dumbstruck, but she’s refusing to look at me, flipping through an old, leather-bound tome. “I saw a change in Lucien, even before I met you myself. The way he used to talk about you . . . if I heard one more damned Violet story, whether he was proud or worried or just bothering me with that arcana to complain about you . . .” She chuckles at the book. I’m having difficulty breathing. “He’d lived in that circle for so long. I don’t think he realized how much it had affected him, even if he never wanted it to. But you did. You held up a mirror and reminded him that he was just as worthy of saving as the surrogates.”

“Of course he was,” I whisper.

“You say that like it’s an easy thing to believe,” she says with a snort. “And then he showed up at my door again, with not one but two surrogates, a companion, and a royal.” Sil lets out an exasperated sigh. “I was so mad. Well, you know, you were there. That wasn’t the plan. Saving those people, a pregnant surrogate, a companion, it was such a risk. Lucien and I, we were so wrapped up in what we were supposed to be doing, we forgot why we were doing it. I thought it was just revenge—that’s all I wanted at first, and I think he did, too. Revenge for Azalea. Blood for blood.”

She finally meets my gaze. Her eyes are red and glassy. “We were wrong. You showed us what really mattered. You changed us both. I wish I could make you see that, Violet.” She turns away, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “He was a fool, to be sure. But you can’t say he didn’t love you.”

I sink into the armchair. Sil quickly busies herself with examining papers and looking at beakers and saying things that don’t make sense to me, like, “The Apothecary will be very interested in this,” or “Got to make sure the Feroner gets a look at these.”

Lucien is gone. The revolution is over. It’s time for me to exercise the freedom we fought so hard for.

“Sil?” I say hesitantly.

“Mph?” she replies, not looking up from a beaker filled with simmering blue liquid.

“I . . . I want to leave. There’s something I want to do. I know there’s so much work to do here, and things to figure out, but . . .”

She gives me her most penetrating stare.

“Spit it out,” she says.

“I want to see the ocean.” It’s been tugging at my heart, the desire to see over the Great Wall, to see what’s out there. To get to the edge of this little piece of my world and climb the wall the royalty built. To see what hasn’t been seen in centuries.

Sil’s pale eyes soften with understanding. “You do what you have to,” she says, patting me on the shoulder, before turning back to Lucien’s table.

WE BURY THE FALLEN IN THE LAWNS SURROUNDING THE Auction House, the Paladin burying our own separately, under a little copse of trees.

Twenty-five in all. Indi, Olive, little Rosie Kelting . . . Ginger died, too. As we cover them with earth, a myriad of flowers grow up over their graves, each girl’s flowers sprouting from the earth one last time. I see Indi’s lemon-yellow blossoms entwine with Olive’s dark green ones.

“I want to see the ocean,” I say to Raven.

She grins at me. “So do I. We’re all coming with you.”

“We?” I ask, startled. She glances over to where Ash and Garnet stand, a little apart, watching this private funeral from a respectable distance.

Raven sighs dramatically. “If we left without them, they’d just follow after us anyway.” She throws an arm around my shoulder. “When do you want to leave?”

IT’S ANOTHER DAY BEFORE WE ARE READY TO SET OUT.

I expect Hazel and Ochre to come, to be eager to go home to the Marsh, but to my surprise, they both staunchly refuse.

“I can’t go back,” Hazel says. “Everything is different now. I . . . I mean something. I matter here. I can’t go back to the Marsh like everything is the same because it’s not. I’m not.”

“Yeah,” Ochre agrees. “Besides, the Society needs me.”