My mother would never have hurt me. My mother had left home for me. She’d left her own sister for me. She’d been my everything, and I’d been hers.
Whatever you are, you aren’t my mother. That thought took root, deep in my brain, as I thought of Lia telling me that she’d been instructed as a child to pretend that the bad things hadn’t happened to her. That the things she’d done hadn’t been the work of her hands. I thought of Laurel telling me that she didn’t play the game.
Nine did.
In Laurel’s case, her inner Nine wasn’t a full-fledged person. But you are. “Seven days and seven pains,” I said softly. “They tortured her. Over and
over and over again. They forced themselves on her, one by one, until she was pregnant with Laurel.”
I saw the exact moment that my captor realized I wasn’t talking to myself. “I wondered how a person could survive something like that, but that’s the
thing. She didn’t survive it.” The blade still against my neck, I pushed down the urge to swallow. “You did.”
She loosened her grip on my hair.
People look at you, and they see her. They love her. But you’re the strong one. You’re the one who matters. You’re the one who deserves to be seen.
“Were you born here?” I asked, watching her face for any clue that my words had hit their target. “Or have you been around for much, much longer?”
A bit more slack. It wasn’t enough. She had the knife. I didn’t. “Do you have a name?” I asked.
No one has ever asked. No one has ever looked at you and seen.
The woman with my mother’s face smiled. She closed her eyes. And then, she let me go. “My name,” she said, her voice echoing loudly enough for the Masters to hear, “is Cassandra.”
I scrambled backward, a chill spreading over my arms.
“Lorelai didn’t even know I existed,” the woman—Cassandra—said. “She didn’t know that all of those times, when her father came into our room and she blacked out, it wasn’t a mercy. It wasn’t luck. It was me.” Cassandra
circled me, her stride predatory. “When you came along, when she named you, I liked to think that it was a thank-you, even if she didn’t realize what she’d done.” Cassandra’s grip on the knife tightened. “And then you were there, and suddenly, Lorelai didn’t need me so much anymore. She was stronger, for you. And I was locked away.”
Step by careful step, I made my way toward the back wall, toward the weapons, profiling her with every step. You’re in control. You’re strong. You do what needs to be done—and you like it.
Whatever this splintered piece of my mother’s psyche had been before the Masters had gotten ahold of her, she was something else now.
You will kill me. I didn’t make the conscious choice to pick up the knife from my weapons cache, but one second it was on the ground, and the next, it was in my hand. I thought of my mother’s dressing room, splattered in blood. I thought of dancing on the side of the road in the snow, of my mom’s face aimed heavenward, her tongue catching snowflakes.
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.”
