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.
But I’d told her that I was sure.
A piercing scream cut through the air. Laurel wasn’t silent now. She wasn’t stoic. She wasn’t Nine.
She’s just a baby. He’s hurting her. He’ll kill her if I don’t— No.
“Yes,” my mother said, closing the space between us. She’d always known exactly what I was thinking. She’d known me the way only someone with our particular skill set could.
Someone who loves me, forever and ever.
“Do it,” my mother insisted, pressing her knife into my hand. “You have to, baby. You are the best thing I ever did—the only good thing I ever did. I can’t be that for Laurel, not now.” She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t panicked.
She was sure.
“But you can,” she continued. “You can love her. You can be there for her.
You can get out of here, and you can live. And to do that…” She placed her left hand over my right hand, guiding the knife to her chest. “You have to kill me.”
Dancing in the snow. Curled up in her lap. Behavior. Personality.
Environment.
I love you. I love you. I—
Her grip on my hand tightened. Her body blocking the motion from the Masters, she jerked me forward. My hand on the knife. Her hand on mine. I felt the blade slide into her chest. She gasped, blood blooming around the wound. I wanted to pull the knife out.
But for Laurel, I didn’t.
“Forever and ever,” I whispered, holding the knife in place. I held her. She slumped forward, bleeding, the light beginning to drain from her eyes.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I didn’t look away. I didn’t so much as blink, not even when I heard a door slam open.
Not even when I heard Agent Briggs’s familiar voice. “Freeze!”
My mom isn’t moving. Her heart isn’t beating. Her eyes—they don’t see me. I pulled the knife out of her chest, and her body fell to the ground as FBI agents poured into the room.
I love you. I love you. I love you. Gone.
