You will kill me. The knife was heavy in my hand as she approached. If I don’t kill you first.
My heartbeat slowed. My hand tightened around the blade. And then, without warning, I knew, the way I so often knew things about other people, that I couldn’t use the blade.
I couldn’t kill this monster without killing my mother, too.
Perhaps, Nightshade had told me, someday, that choice will be yours.
I let my hands fall to my sides. “I can’t hurt you. I won’t.”
I expected to see victory in my opponent’s eyes. Instead, I saw fear.
Why? I wondered. And then I realized. You fight. You survive. You protect Lorelai—but what if there’s nothing to protect her from?
“I’m not a threat.” I stopped moving, stopped fighting. “Home isn’t a place,” I said, my voice as hoarse as hers had been earlier. “It’s not having a bed to come home to, or a yard, or a Christmas tree at the holidays. Home is the people who love you.”
She held the knife out in front of her body as she closed the space between us, watching for any hint of movement in my hand.
I let my knife fall to the ground.
“Home is the people who love you,” I said again. “I had a home growing up, and I have one now. I have people who love me, people I love. I have a family, and they would die for me.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Just like I would die for you.”
Not for Cassandra. Not for the Pythia. Not even for Lorelai, whoever she was and had become.
For my mom. For the woman who’d taught me to dance it off. For the one who’d kissed every skinned knee and taught me to read people and told me, every single day, that I was loved.
“I will kill you,” Cassandra hissed. “I’ll like it.”
You want me to pick up the knife. You want me to fight.
“Forever and ever.” I closed my eyes. I waited.
Forever and ever.
Forever and ever.
“No matter what.”
I wasn’t the one who’d spoken those words. I opened my eyes.
The woman holding the knife was shaking. “Forever and ever, Cassie. No matter what.”
My mother’s shaking hands explored my face. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “You got so big.”
Something broke inside of me at the sound of my mother’s voice, the expressiveness of her features, the familiarity of her touch.
“And so beautiful.” Her voice broke. “Oh, baby. No.” She jerked back. “No, no, no…You’re not supposed to be here.”
“As touching as this reunion is…” Director Sterling stood. “The task remains unchanged.”
My mother tried to take a step back from me, but I wouldn’t let her. I lowered my voice—too low for the watching Masters to hear. “They can’t make us do this.”
Her gaze went hollow. “They can make you do anything.”
My eyes went to the scars on her arms, her chest—every inch of exposed skin, except for her face. Some were smooth. Some were puckered. Some were healing still.
In the stands, Malcolm Lowell stood. One by one, the Masters followed suit.
I bent to pick my knife up off the ground. We could fight—not all of them, and maybe not for long, but it was better than the alternative.
“I don’t want this,” my mom said. “For you.”
The scars. The pain. The role of the Pythia.
“My team will find us.” I channeled Lia and willed those words to sound true. “Wherever this place is, they won’t stop looking. They’ll figure out that the director is working against them. We just have to buy them time.”
My mom stared at me, and I realized that even though she was the person who’d raised me and loved me and made me what I was, I still couldn’t read her, not the way I could anyone else. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t know what she had been through—not really.
I didn’t know what it meant when she nodded.
What are you saying yes to?
The sound of a door opening and shutting alerted me to the return of Malcolm Lowell. I didn’t even know he left. When I saw what he’d gone to fetch, I stopped breathing.
Laurel.
She was born to take Malcolm’s place, to be the next Nine. And now, he had his hands on her shoulders. He shoved her toward Director Sterling, who grasped Laurel by the arm.
I saw now what my mother had meant.
They can make you do anything.
The director slid a knife out of his own pocket. “You fight,” he said, holding the blade to Laurel’s throat, “or she dies.”
The director didn’t wait for a response before he began to cut. Just a little. Just a warning. Laurel didn’t scream. She didn’t move. But the high-pitched mewling that came out of her throat hit me like a physical blow.
“How sure are you that your team will find you?” My mother bent down to pick up her own blade. “We’re halfway to the desert, in the middle of nowhere, underground. If they dig into Malcolm’s past, if they go back far enough, they might see a pattern, but most people wouldn’t.”
Dean. Michael. Lia. Sloane.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Wherever we are, they’ll find us.”
My mother nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I repeated. What are you saying?
She advanced on me. “We have to fight. Laurel’s just a baby, Cassie. She’s you, and she’s me, and she’s ours. Do you understand?”
They can make you do anything.
“You have to kill me.” My mother’s words sliced into me, ice-cold and uncompromising.
“No,” I said.
“Yes.” My mother circled me, the way her alter ego had earlier. “You have to fight, Cassie. One of us has to die.”
“No.” I was shaking my head and backing away from her, but I couldn’t make myself take my eyes off the knife.
You don’t have to play the game anymore. The promise I’d made my sister came back to me. Not ever again. You don’t have to be Nine.
“Take the knife, Cassie,” my mother said. “Use it.”
You do it, I thought. You kill me. I understood now why she’d asked me how sure I was that help was coming. If you thought you were dooming me to life as the Pythia, you’d give me mercy. You’d plunge your knife into my chest to save me from your fate.