The Masters had a history of taking women—women who had traumatic histories, women who were capable of being forged into something new. They brought their captives to the brink of death, close enough to taste it, and then…
A figure stepped forward from the shadows. My gaze flicked to either side, and I noticed seven weapons laid out along the wall behind me.
Seven Masters. Seven ways of killing.
The figure on the other side of the arena took another step forward, then another. I was aware of hooded figures filing into the seats above us, but all I could think was that if they’d brought me here to fight the Pythia, that meant that the woman walking toward me was someone I knew very well.
Her face was hidden by a hood, but as I made my way to my feet and stepped toward her, drawn like a moth to the flame, she lowered it.
Her face had changed in the past six years. She hadn’t aged, but she was thinner and pale and her features looked like they’d been carved from stone. Her skin was porcelain, her eyes impossibly large.
She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“Mom.” The word escaped my throat. One second, I was stepping hesitantly toward her, and the next, the space between us had disappeared.
“Cassie.” Her voice was deeper than I remembered, hoarse, and when her arms wrapped around me, I realized that the skin on her face looked smooth in part because of contrast.
The rest of her body was covered in twisting, puckered scars.
Seven days and seven pains. I made a choking sound. My mother pulled me up against her, laying my head on her shoulder. She pressed her lips to my temple.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“I had to find you. Once I realized you were alive, once I realized they had you—I couldn’t stop looking. I would never stop looking.”
“I know.”
There was something in my mother’s tone that reminded me that we were being watched. Over her shoulder, I could see the Masters—six men and one woman, sitting in a line. Director Sterling. Ree. I tried to memorize the others’ faces, but my gaze was drawn upward.
Malcolm Lowell sat above the others, his eyes locked on mine.
Nine is the greatest among us, the bridge from generation to generation….
“We have to get out of here.” I kept my voice low. “We have to—”
“We can’t,” my mother said. “There is no out, Cassie. Not for us.”
I tried to pull back so that I could see her face, but her arms tightened around me, holding me close.
Tight.
In the stands, Ree caught my gaze and then shifted hers to the far wall. Like the one behind me, it was lined with weapons.
Six of them. Not seven. Six.
“Where’s the knife?” I choked on the words. “Mom—”
The hand that had been stroking my hair a moment before grasped it tightly now. She jerked my head to the side.
“Mom—”
She raised the knife to the side of my throat. “It isn’t personal. It’s you, or it’s me.”
I’d been warned, over and over again, that my mother might not be the woman I remembered.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said, my voice shaking.
“But that’s the thing,” she whispered, her eyes lighting on mine. “I do.”
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.