Marina did not move. Every instinct in her body screamed to close the distance between herself and her daughters in a single leap, and every year of surviving rooms exactly like this one told her that a single leap was precisely the mistake a man like Vael was hoping she would make.

"Talk fast," Silvain said, "and keep your hands where I can see them."

Vael's hands did not move from the girls' shoulders, and that alone told Marina more than his words were about to. He was not holding them as hostages in the way a desperate man held hostages, with tension, with a weapon pressed close, with the...