It was a book of fairy tales.
A nudge here. A nudge there. A cascade, years in the making…
Jameson and Avery hadn’t figured out the code yet, hadn’t even finished translating the text, but the illustrations spoke volumes, especially one in particular, which depicted a spider and the most intricate, most beautiful web.
Beside Jameson, Jackson suddenly raised his shotgun, a far-off figure in his sights.
That’s not good.Jameson’s mind went immediately to Avery’s mother’s family, local criminals who bore no love for any of them, but he and Avery had been careful, flying into an adjacent city, and Oren and his team were stationed around the perimeter.
They didn’t stop this visitor, though. Jameson registered her identity as she drew closer.Nora.She was moving slowly and very possibly still injured, but Jameson nonetheless figured he might be taking his life in his own hands when he jogged to intercept her before she could get anywhere near Avery and Eve and the lighthouse.
“Let them finish,” Jameson said.
Nora looked past him, her gaze settling on Eve. “He was right, it seems.”
“Who was?” Jameson asked. Angry stitches were still visible in Nora’s skin, cutting across her collarbone and disappearing down into her shirt. There was no telling how many other injuries she had, how many scars she would be adding to her collection.
“A scholar,” Nora said, leaving it at that.Brady Daniels.“He found me at the private hospital that a rather cryptic British gentleman had me sent to. Switzerland. The Alps. Not a bad place to hide a person away, but said scholar had apparently been looking for me for some time, before Vantage, even.”
Jameson wondered if he’d ever be able to hear the wordVantagewithout an avalanche of memories hitting him so hard he could barely breathe.
“The scholar wanted to know,” Nora continued, “if I’d truly done what I set out to do and destroyed the Gilded Blade.”
“And did you?” Jameson asked, wary about the fact that she was here at all. Avery had come through the Crucible and returned to the world, to a massive fortune and a position of power. Eve haddiedbut lived in truth. Jameson suspected Nora was fully capable of reading quite a bit into those two facts, even without knowing that the leather book in Jameson’s hand might well hold a list.
Family lines.
The holders of those lines.
The web.
“I thought my job was done.” Nora’s accent was harsh, but her tone was almost meditative. “But in that hospital in Switzerland, I found an envelope on my bedside table. And do you know what was in it?”
“A letter from my grandmother?” Jameson guessed.
“No,” Nora replied simply. “This.” She held up a chain, a delicate, rose-gold chain with a matching rose-gold charm on the end—not a fleur-de-lis but a heart. “It’s engraved,” Nora said. “Front and back.”
“May I?” Jameson asked, and at Nora’s curt nod, he took the necklace and examined the charm. On the front, engraved into the metal, there was what appeared to be a set of initials:
N.A.V.
Jameson turned the charm over. On the back, there was a name:Aristotle.Jameson stared at the letters inAristotle, playing with them for a moment, trying to anagram them, and then he stopped.
N.A.V.
“Those aren’t initials,” he said. “Natura abhorret vacuum.It’s a quote. Aristotle.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum.”Nora looked again to Avery and Eve, and this time, as if she felt Nora’s eyes on her, Avery turned around. “It’s the idea that if you create a power vacuum, someonewillfill it.”
A hundred yards away, Avery and Eve started toward them.
“The head and heir of the Kyrie line are dead,” Nora continued. “It need never be what it once was, but the family—that very dangerous family—will be looking for someone to follow, and I was raised as a daughter of the house. They will accept me, especially if I show up with a Woman in Red.”
Eve, Jameson thought.
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” he said. “But if you fill it—”
“I can make the Kyrie into something new,” Nora finished.
