Manifest Destiny, I remembered. Fate. Disgust ripped through me.
“We have no choice.” Lydia looked me in the eye, and I could see that she believed what she was saying with every ounce of her being. “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to for the greater good. And it’s not that I don’t respect them.” She yanked up her shirt and pointed at the tattoo of the flower half-covered in petals. “I’ll always remember them, just like the rest of the Circle will. Martyrs.”
Close up, I could tell that some of the petals were more raw and new than others. “Each petal is someone you killed,” I whispered.
Jack leaned over my shoulder, staring at Lydia’s rib cage, shell-shocked.
“You—” Stellan broke off in a string of Russian.
“Just kill him,” Lydia commanded, pulling her shirt back down. “He’s heard too much. Kill the maid, too.”
“No!” I cried. “I’ll—” Oh God, what could I do? “I’ve heard it all, too. I’ll tell someone. And you won’t kill me. Just let them go and they won’t say anything.”
Cole didn’t lower the gun. I couldn’t just sit back and watch more people I cared about get hurt. There was only one way this could end.
“I’ll come with you,” I said, “if you let them go.”
“Avery, no.” Elodie’s eyes were on Cole’s gun, calculating.
“We’re not leaving you,” Stellan growled.
“Yes, you are.” Stellan had pocketed the bracelet the second we saw Lydia and Cole at the Arc de Triomphe. They’d keep it safe and I’d go with the Saxons to look for my mom, then try to escape. “Go,” I said. “Cole, let them out.”
Cole’s violet eyes flashed angrily. After what seemed like ages, Lydia pulled on his arm, dropping his gun. “We’ll get to them later,” Lydia said, and told the driver to stop.
Stellan’s eyes met mine, and he shook his head. I shifted my gaze to Elodie. “Go,” I mouthed. She reached behind them and opened the car door. “You too,” I urged Jack, trying to shift off his lap.
“You know I’m not leaving,” he said. I did know.
The second Elodie shut the door, we were driving away.
• • •
“Mom!” I screamed, for what must have been the hundredth time in the hours since we’d arrived at the Saxons’ Paris residence. Guards had stashed me in a windowless room full of TVs, then locked the door behind me. It was unlikely my mom was here—they probably had her in London—but just in case, I’d screamed so much my voice sounded like I’d spent years chain-smoking.
Someone pounded at the door. “I told you she’s not here. Shut up.”
I kicked the door and paced across the room, waiting. For my father? For Lydia? I pulled on the short piece of hair at the back of my neck. Last time I’d been captured by one of the Circle families, my hair had been the only casualty. But this was my own family. The loss of them alone was already more than I could handle.
On cue, footsteps came, and the lock turned. My father slipped inside, and my first thought was relief that it wasn’t Lydia. I never wanted to see my sister again. My second thought was that this felt a thousand times worse that I could have imagined.
My father pushed some buttons on a remote, making every TV in the room spring to life. Each screen showed my own stricken face as I frantically, futilely, pressed my palm over the wound in Takumi Mikado’s chest.
“You’re a hero now,” my father said, setting down the remote on a desk at the edge of the room. All around us, there was the moment Eli looked up and drew a gun. Then there was me, and the first family of Japan, shocked, terrorized. Over and over again. “You came so close to saving Mikado’s life.”
I tore my eyes away from the screens. “No I didn’t.”
“In our narrative, you did. You’re the girl who could have run away but tried valiantly to save the victim.”
I looked at the news broadcast with new eyes. “How could you do this?”
“You only need to watch a few minutes of the news to see the answer to that question. They’re all looking to us. You’re world famous. And now the Circle wants you twice as much.” Alistair tidied papers on the desk, setting the stack down with finality. “When I was younger, I believed the families of the Circle could be allies, not enemies. My father and my brother felt the same way, and look where it got them. But I came to see it differently, and your sister understands better than I ever did at her age. People like us aren’t meant to be cogs in a machine. Sooner or later, one family is going to take charge, and it has to be us. You’ll come to understand.”
He reached out to put an arm around me, and I shook him off violently. “I will never understand this. And do you really not think the rest of the Circle will find out?”
My father sat in the swiveling desk chair, looking tired again. “I’d hoped you would come around on your own. But if that’s not going to happen . . .”
It was hot and stuffy in the room, but my whole body went cold. “You said you loved my mom,” I choked out.
My father planted both hands on the desktop and looked right at me. “I don’t want this, Avery. I don’t want it any more than you do.”
But he would still threaten her to get me to cooperate, and after everything else I’d found out about the Saxons, I had no doubt he’d follow through. “I’ll find the tomb for you,” I said desperately. “We have clues. We’re so close.”
My father tapped his fingers on the pile of papers.
“I’ll marry whoever you want if you let her go. Just let her go.” I leaned on the desk, too, so I was face-to-face with my father. “Please.”