Mother Superior exhaled softly, wiping the blood from her blade with a linen cloth. She turned to Arya with an expression of calm inevitability. “He would have betrayed us.”

Arya’s pulse pounded against her skull. “You don’t know that!”

Isabel smiled. It was almost sad. “Yes, I do.”

The other nuns stood in silence, their faces unreadable, their eyes watching Arya like she was the intruder here. Like she was the one who didn’t understand.

Arya felt the weight of the centuries pressing down on this place, felt the shadows moving in the corners.

She realized, for the first time, that maybe she didn’t know what the convent really was....