“She died.” Gigi tried to wrap her mind around that, even as she catalogued every other piece of information Helena had just parted with. “Your Vega died years ago.”
“She came to me on the eve of her last Crucible.” Helena’s voice went hoarse. “To saygood-bye. My Vega.”
“You loved her,” Gigi realized. “You and she, you were—”
“Wewere forged in the Crucible, Vega and I. She was my enemy, my rival, my everything. As part of the trials, you’re told that only one of you can survive in the end. They make you believe it. Buttosurvive, you need one another. As the end of our Crucible neared, the trials became competitive once more.” Helena’s eyes closed, her grip on the fleur-de-lis tightening. “I believed—fully believed—that I would have to die in the last trial for Vega to survive.”
“And you would have.” Gigi could see that, plain as day.
“Yes,” Helena said, her voice electric. “A thousand timesyes.”
You loved her.Gigi felt her own eyes tearing up. “And the third Candidate? Andy?”
“There are years when all three Candidates survive, and years when they do not.” Helena stood suddenly and walked briskly over to the family portrait Gigi had examined the day before.
Andy didn’t survive, did she?Gigi bit back those words as she came to stand beside Helena. She waited for the old woman to say something—anything.
Helena raised a hand to that portrait, to her then-young sons. “Giving birth was a trial of a different sort for me.” The subject change should have felt abrupt, but it didn’t. “My body did not want to cooperate,” Helena continued, “but I tried and tried again—four sons, and I named the lastSeverin, because giving birth to him severed my chances to ever have a daughter. I waited for three generations for a girl to carry on the family line, for a daughter who might someday bring Vega back into my world, however briefly.”
“The girl who would be queen,” Gigi said.
“Vega gave me this necklace, bearing her family’s symbol, an ancient symbol of the Blade, in nineteen fifty-one. We both waited—for decades, we waited, but Calla was barely more than a babe when Vega made her final call.” Helena shook her head. “She came to me, my Vega—to tell me good-bye, to tell me that she’d done what she could to secure the future. To begin a great cascade to make the kind of world we always wanted to make, Vega and I.My Vega.”
This is it, Gigi thought.She told me about the Crucible because after all these years, she needed to tell someone about Vega. Her Vega.
And now it couldn’t have been clearer that the old woman wasdone.
But Gigi wasn’t. “Where does the Crucible take place? How long does it last?”
“You ask the wrong questions.”
“What do you want me to ask?”
“Ask me if your Watcher is my Calla. Ask me if my great-granddaughtersurvived.”
In the back of Gigi’s mind, she could suddenly hear the Woman in Red’s voice:I am not Calla Thorp. There is no Calla Thorp.
Calla is no more, and I am no one by design.
And Zella—Zella had told Gigi that Calla waslong gone.
“Did Calla survive?” Gigi asked.
“There is only one way that Calla ever would have parted with this necklace,” Helena whispered, “and that isdead.”
“Bullshit.”
Gigi whipped her head toward the door.Knox.How long had he been there, listening?
“I saw her,” Gigi told Helena. “I saw Calla. I saw her eyes.” But Brady’s voice came back to Gigi, the skeptic desperate to believe:Heterochromia might be rare, but anyone with colored contacts could fake it.And Gigi had never seen the Watcher’s face—not her face, not her hair, not anything but those eyes.
“You’re lying.” Every muscle in Knox’s face was taut. “Calla’s not dead.” His eyes were… wild. Gigi scampered to lay a careful hand on Knox’s back, but he didn’t even seem to feel it.He’s really in the dark place now.
“Knox Landry.” Helena looked him up and down. “You and Calla were not meant to be. I had no objections to her sneaking out to the bayou. The skills Severin taught hershouldhave given Calla a leg up at surviving her subsequent training and the Crucible. Butyou?” Helena shook her head at Knox. “You and Calla? That could not be.”
“Because I was nothing, and she was a Thorp.” Knox’s tone was borderline animal.
“Love of a man can be a liability in the Crucible, so before I sent Calla to train, I did what had to be done. I told her the ugly truth. I told her who you were—to her.”
