EMBER’S POV

“I’ve heard her talk through the wall,” Marjorie says, her voice stripped of all its trembling. “She chants the same ugly words over and over, and it is in no tongue I have ever heard. She recites it for hours from strange, ancient books she guards like gold.”

The chill runs all the way up the back of my neck.

“And I have seen what she does when she is done reading,” she goes on, lower and lower, and I don’t stop her. I couldn’t if I tried. “I have watched her slide out of the hidden servant passages long after midnight, creeping into those girls’ rooms to...