It had begun as an act of a frightened sister for a frightened brother — one night, a coffin, a debt, the oldest kind of family loyalty twisted to a terrible use.

She had lain awake that first night certain she had risked her soul and her place for a single reckless kindness, and had promised herself that at dawn she would help him slip away and never speak of it again.

But dawn came, and Matías did not leave, and when she pressed him he showed her, for the first time, the face beneath the desperate brother — the one that had gotten him into debt with dangerous men in the first place.

He had found the tunnels by then.

He had understood what the convent held.