Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

“You killed my mother,” I said. “You people took her. You attacked her—”

“You misunderstand.” Nightshade made the words sound reasonable, gentle even, when the room around him was charged with an unholy energy.

Power. Games. Pain. This was the cult’s stock-in-trade.

I reached for a piece of paper and drew the symbol I’d seen on Beau’s chest. I slammed it against the glass. “This was on my mother’s coffin,” I said. “I don’t misunderstand anything. She wasn’t part of the pattern. She wasn’t killed on a Fibonacci date. She was attacked with a knife the same year you were ‘proving yourself worthy’ with poison.” My voice shook. “So don’t tell me that I don’t understand. You—all of you, one of you, I don’t know—but you chose her. You tested her and you found her unworthy.”

They didn’t kill children. They left them to die. But my mother?

“You killed her,” I said, the words rough against my throat and sour in my mouth. “You killed her and stripped her flesh from her bones and buried her.”

“We did no such thing.” The emphasis on the first word somehow managed to break through the haze of fury and sorrow clouding my mind. “There can only be one Pythia.”

Every instinct I had told me this was what Nightshade had brought me here to hear. This was what he’d traded his last remaining bit of leverage to say.

“One woman to provide counsel. One woman to bear the child. One child—one worthy child—to carry the tradition on.”

One woman. One child.

You killed her.

We did no such thing.

All are tested. All must be found worthy.

My mother had been buried with care. With remorse. I thought of the woman I’d seen with the little girl.

One woman. One child.

I thought about how a group could possibly persist for hundreds of years, taking women, holding them, until captive became monster. Lady Justice. The Pythia.

I thought about the fact that the woman I’d seen by the fountain hadn’t taken her child. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t asked for help.

She’d smiled at Nightshade.

There can only be one Pythia.

“You make them fight.” I wasn’t sure if I was profiling or talking to him. I wasn’t sure it mattered. “You take a new woman, a new Pythia, and…”

There can only be one.

“The woman,” I said. “The one I saw with you.” My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. “She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother.”

“We all have choices,” Nightshade replies. “The Pythia chooses to live.”

Why bring me here? I thought, aware, on some level, that my body was shaking. My eyes were wet. Why tell me this? Why give me a glimpse of something I’m not blessed enough to know?

“Perhaps someday,” Nightshade said, “that choice will be yours, Cassandra.”

Judd had been standing ramrod stiff beside me, but in that instant, he surged forward. He slammed the heel of his hand against the switch on the wall, and the pane darkened.

You can’t see us. I can see you, but you can’t see us.

Judd took me by the shoulders. He pulled me to him, blocking my view, holding me, even as I started to fight him.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re okay. I’ve got you, Cassie. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

An order. A plea.

“Two-one-one-seven.” Until Nightshade spoke, I hadn’t realized the speaker was still on. At first, I thought he was saying a Fibonacci number, but then he clarified. “If you want to see the woman, you’ll find her in room two-one-one-seven.”

The Pythia chooses to live. The words echoed in my mind. Perhaps one day, that choice will be yours.

Room 2117.

The hours after Nightshade’s interrogation blurred into nothingness. Sterling called to say that Briggs had received the antivenom. She called to say that he was expected to make a full—if slow—recovery. She called to say they found the woman.

They found the little girl.

Fewer than twenty hours after Nightshade had named my mother’s killer, I stepped into room 2117 at the Dark Angel Hotel Casino. You could smell the blood from fifty yards away. On the walls. On the floor. The scene was familiar.

Blood. On the walls. On my hand. I feel it. I smell it—

But this time, there was a body. The woman—strawberry blond hair, younger than I remembered—lay in her own blood, her white dress soaked through. She’d been killed with a knife.

Wielded by Nightshade, before he was captured? One of the other Masters? A new Pythia? I didn’t know. And for the first time since I’d joined the Naturals program, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. This woman had killed my mother. Whether she’d had a choice, whether it was kill or be killed, whether she’d enjoyed it—

I couldn’t be sorry she was dead.

The little girl sat in a chair, her small legs dangling halfway to the ground. She was staring blankly ahead, no expression on her face.

She was the reason I was here.

The child hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even seemed to see a single one of the agents who had come into this room. They were afraid to touch her, afraid to remove her by force.

I remember coming back to my mother’s dressing room. I remember there was blood.