“You,” Katalin replied, “should have been judged long ago, Toby Hawthorne. You should not be alive, let alone here. But then,sheshouldn’t be, either.”
“Hannah?” Toby said immediately.
“Your Hannah is no concern of mine. I was speaking of the woman who was once your mother, the woman who isstillyour mother, the aberration who hasneverstopped being Alice Hawthorne.”
Even if Rohan had never heard the phrasetrue believerused in reference to the Gilded Blade, he would have understood, just from the way Katalin Aquila Reyes said the wordaberration, that he was dealing with a zealot.
A dangerous one.
“There is a reason that most of us ascend when we are young,” the true believer continued. “The older a tree, the longer its roots and the deeper into the ground they go.Katalinceased to be the moment she ascended, butAlice?She persists even now.” It couldn’t have been clearer that the Omega considered that an unforgivable sin. “A woman who is unwilling to disavow her worldly life, a mother who cannot or will not foreswear her own child—how could one such as she ever do what needs to be done? How could a woman like that ever beworthyof a place among the three?”
“Power must come at a cost,” Rohan said. The first step to manipulating someone wasunderstandingthem. “Always.”
“Those who cannot or will not pay the price were never meant to don the cloak,” the true believer murmured. “To ascend and maintain your worldly ties, that is an abomination.Anathema.”
Rohan wondered what lengths this woman would go to in order to root out what she saw as rot, what lengths she might havealreadygone to in order to try to get the upper hand on Alice Hawthorne.
“Hannah is also a mother,” Toby said.
Always Hannah with you, Rohan thought.
“Was,” their captor corrected. “Your Hannahwasa mother, first and always. She made her choice and made it again. There is no shame in that, in recognizing one’s own limitations and refusing the call.”
Made her choice and made itagain… Rohan recognized the clear implication there, and so did Toby.
“You’re saying that Hannah said no.” Toby paused, and in that pause, there was agony. “Twice. That she turned down the Crucible twice.”
“You’re saying,” Rohan interjected, “that Avery’s mother isn’t the Watcher.”
“Hannah Rooney is nothing now.” There was no compassion in Katalin’s tone, even as it turned a bit poetic. “Dust in the wind. There is beauty in that, I suppose. Death on one’s own terms. An ordinary death for an ordinary woman.”
Rohan moved in a flash, wrenching Toby Hawthorne back just as the man attempted to launch himself forward. It took every ounce of strength Rohan had to restrain him, to keep Toby from cutting himself to shreds in a doomed attempt to get at the woman who was, Rohan deeply suspected, trying to bait him into doing exactly that.
Hannah Rooney is nothing now.
An ordinary death for an ordinary woman.
Oh, the Omega clearly meant what she was saying, every word of it, but she’d also clearly come here for a reason, condescended to speak to two men of sacred things for a reason.
“You’re a means to an end,” Rohan warned Toby. “She wants you dead—but not at her hand. She wants Alice toknowthat all her machinations, all her sacrilege accomplished naught.”
Toby struggled against Rohan’s hold but otherwise ignored him altogether, focusing only on the woman on the other side of the blades. “You’re saying Hannah chose to die?”
“I gave your Hannah the opportunity to save herself when she was dying. I could have arranged for a transplant. Hannah declined.”
All at once, the fight went out of Toby. His body went utterly stillbeneath Rohan’s grip, but Rohan instinctively knew better than to loosen it.
“You came to her five years ago.” Toby’s voice was more scrape than whisper. “You offered to save her life if she said yes, if she agreed to go with you, to disappear, todie. You told her about the Crucible, including what it was called.”
“I offered to save her life if she would come with me for training in anticipation of the next Crucible. Such thingsareallowed for those who do not have the blood, which she did not. I was allowed to make certain disclosures, many of which your mother had not made. If that information did not die with Hannah Rooney, it is no fault of mine.”
“You used her,” Rohan inferred.
“To get to me,” Toby finished. “To make me even more of a liability, to force my mother into a position where she would have to render judgment or be deemed compromised.”
“I might have suggested to your Hannah that her daughter might make a suitable Candidate at some point, if enough pressure could be brought to bear. If the woman felt the need to leave a message to amanin case that happened, that, too, is no fault of mine.” Katalin smiled. “And here you are, all these years later. And here you will at long last be judged.”
“But not yet.” A familiar voice came from beyond Katalin.Zella.Rohan had to appreciate the duchess’s ever-impeccable sense of timing.
