Page 191 of Phoenix's Fire

But I'd just realized that was a lie too. Those women weren't from here. I was so used to thinking they were, but Ayla had said Tobias's mother had been a Dragon. Her mother had been one as well. Mine probably was too.

"Wait," I breathed. "Do either of you remember a woman ever being sent to quarantine?"

"Would we know?" Abi asked.

"Everyone knows what happened to Ayla and Meri," I pointed out.

"Yes, but would they make a production out of sending a wife to quarantine?" Felicity asked. "Wouldn't a man be too ashamed to let that be known? I mean, weknowthere are women in there." She gestured at me with both hands, mimicking what I'd done only moments before.

"I think someone's lying," I said softly.

"How?" Felicity pressed.

But I wasn't ready to tell these women everything I knew. I didn't trust them that much. I wanted to feel them out, to see if they were willing to share anything, but to do that, they needed to start sharing with me.

"That old woman," I tried. "You know the one. She sits by the locked door that leads to quarantine?"

"Beulah Grant," Felicity said. "She watches the door and is allowed to escort visitors during the day. Usually, that's husbands attending their wives. Why?"

"Wouldn't she know something about how the women get in there?" I asked. "Because if none of us can remember anyone being taken there, then who's in there?"

"Your mother?" Abi said, sounding like she wasn't keeping up.

"Not anymore, but my mother also had no brothers," I told them. "No sisters, parents, or anything. I don't have any relations from her side to keep track of."

"We don't talk about those in quarantine," Felicity said, glancing over at me. "But wouldn't Ms. Lawton know too? She raises their children. She's raised many generations of children now. She'd have to know the mothers!"

"How old is she?" I asked, wondering how many classes of girls she had mentored.

"Forty-five," Abi breathed. "Ms. Grant is sixty-four."

"How?" I breathed, awed to hear such an advanced age.

"Barren," Felicity explained. "Ms. Grant was married for four years and was never able to produce a child. Ms. Lawton had two, but there were complications with the second. Her courses stopped and she never conceived again."

"It's the only way a woman is excused from marriage," Abi told me. "She must try for at least three years with no success at conceiving. Not birthing, mind. Just conceiving. If her husband dies before then, she will be remarried. If not, he can put her aside, like with Ms. Grant. She was shamed for many years and refused to even take meals with the society."

"And I don't know a way to prevent conception or fake being barren," I said, mostly to myself. "I just don't want to get married, but I don't want to be isolated in quarantine either. If I try what Ayla did and they won't kick me out?"

"Yeah," Felicity mumbled. "And you have a point about too many of us doing it. But what other choice do we have?"

"I don't know," I said. "Tonight, the girls' wing is filled with so much crying. I'm considered lucky because Tobias proposed, but I'm just scared."

"And you have every right to be," Felicity told me.

"Don't tell her that!" Abi snapped.

"She's not a fool!" Felicity shot back. "Callah has seen what husbands do. She works in the infirmary! She put Helah's face back together. I'm sure she understands breeding much better than you think."

"Meri told me her husband held her down to finish," I said. "She told me it hurt so much she couldn't stop crying, but he didn't care. He was just frustrated because she was making him feel bad."

"And so she had relations with her brother?" Abi huffed, sounding like she didn't believe me.

But I leaned forward to look across Felicity so I could see her. "Meri lied."

That made Felicity sit up straight. "What?!"

"Meri wanted to hurt her husband the way he hurt her. She knew her brother had been to visit her the week she'd conceived - or close enough. She told Gideon that so he would react. She hoped she'd be thrown out, because she was afraid she'd die otherwise."

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