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“Ten.”

“Have you been in touch with Paul?” I doubted it. The Fates would’ve forbidden it.

“My path crossed his a couple years ago.” Her face grew wistful. “He looked so…normal. He had a family of his own. A nice house. It seemed incredible to me that we were siblings.”

“No two children have the same childhood, even those raised in the same household.”

“I used to wonder what our lives would’ve been like if we had been raised under the same roof.”

“But you don’t wonder anymore?”

Penny shrugged. “No point. What’s done is done.”

One of the Fates’ favorite sayings. Listening to Penny was like listening to an old version of myself. It was unsettling, to say the least.

“Did you have any parental figures in your life after foster care?”

“There was a fury called Madge. She was one of my trainers.” Penny dropped eye contact.

“Did something bad happen to Madge?”

Penny gnawed her lower lip. “Sort of.”

“Did the Fates punish her?”

“No. Well, afterward they did. It wasn’t Madge’s fault, though.”

Oh boy. As much as I hated to pry, I had to ask. “What wasn’t her fault?”

“She went mad and…hurt me. It’s rare, but a known risk. Not everyone can handle the excess of power over a long period of time.”

I knew what happened to furies who lost their minds. It had been one of my many worries when I was still active. Unlike Penny, I hadn’t been close to any furies who’d suffered that fate—only because I hadn’t been close to anyone at all.

“Did they kill Madge?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. The Fates would’ve treated Madge like a rabid dog and put her down.

“Yes.” The word came out garbled.

“That wasn’t your fault either, Penny.”

Her face strained against the onslaught of tears. “I don’t know about that.”

An unsettling thought took root. “Is Madge the reason you’re here?” I’d assumed Penny’s injury had been sustained in the field.

The fury bowed her head. “Yes, but like I said, it wasn’t her fault.”

The Fates didn’t simply kill Madge because she went mad; they killed her because Madge had damaged their goods. It was divine retribution as much as anything else.

“What did she do?”

Penny kept her gaze fixed on her keyboard. “We were training outside. Madge had been acting strangely all morning. Uncontrollable twitches. A quick temper. Then she accused me of stealing her wings. Told me she wanted them back. If I didn’t give them to her, she would take them.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“She ripped mine from my body and sealed the stumps so that I couldn’t ‘steal’ hers again. The Fates’ best healers tried to repair them or regrow them, but it wasn’t possible.”

“What do you mean she sealed the stumps?”

Penny’s normally cheerful face remained placid. “I mean she lit a torch and burned the two spots on my back where she’d wrenched off my wings.”