All In (The Naturals, #3)(83)

“Nine is the greatest of us. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation.”

Your leader, I filled in. Beau hadn’t just been born in their walls. He’d been born to lead them.

“You left him to die,” I said.

“We do not kill children,” Nightshade repeated, his voice just as flat as it had been the first time he said the words. “Even if they prove themselves unworthy. Even when they fail to do what is asked and it becomes clear they will never be able to take the mantle to which they were born. Even when the way must be cleared for a true heir.”

What did they ask you to do, Beau? What kind of monster were they molding you to be? I couldn’t let my mind go down that path. I had to concentrate on the here and now.

On Nightshade.

“And the little girl?” I said. “The one I saw you with. Is she worthy? Is she the new heir? A true heir?” I took a step forward, toward the glass. “What are you doing to her?”

I don’t believe in wishing.

“Are you her father?” I asked.

“The girl has many fathers.”

That answer sent a chill down my spine. “Seven Masters,” I said, hoping to jar him into telling me something I didn’t know. “The Pythia. And Nine.”

“All are tested. All must be found worthy.”

“And that woman I saw with you? She’s worthy?” The question tore out of me with quiet force. My mother wasn’t worthy.

My mother fought.

“Did you take her, too?” I asked, my mind on the woman I’d seen. “Did you attack her, cut her?” I continued, my heart pounding in my chest. “Did you torture her until she became one of you? Your oracle?”

Nightshade was quiet for several moments. Then he leaned forward, his eyes on mine. “I like to think of the Pythia more as Lady Justice,” he said. “She is our counsel, our judge and our jury, until her child comes of age. She lives and dies for us and we for her.”

Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

“You killed my mother,” I said. “You people took her. You attacked her—”

“You misunderstand.” Nightshade made the words sound reasonable, gentle even, when the room around him was charged with an unholy energy.

Power. Games. Pain. This was the cult’s stock-in-trade.

I reached for a piece of paper and drew the symbol I’d seen on Beau’s chest. I slammed it against the glass. “This was on my mother’s coffin,” I said. “I don’t misunderstand anything. She wasn’t part of the pattern. She wasn’t killed on a Fibonacci date. She was attacked with a knife the same year you were ‘proving yourself worthy’ with poison.” My voice shook. “So don’t tell me that I don’t understand. You—all of you, one of you, I don’t know—but you chose her. You tested her and you found her unworthy.”

They didn’t kill children. They left them to die. But my mother?

“You killed her,” I said, the words rough against my throat and sour in my mouth. “You killed her and stripped her flesh from her bones and buried her.”

“We did no such thing.” The emphasis on the first word somehow managed to break through the haze of fury and sorrow clouding my mind. “There can only be one Pythia.”

Every instinct I had told me this was what Nightshade had brought me here to hear. This was what he’d traded his last remaining bit of leverage to say.

“One woman to provide counsel. One woman to bear the child. One child—one worthy child—to carry the tradition on.”

One woman. One child.

You killed her.

We did no such thing.

All are tested. All must be found worthy.

My mother had been buried with care. With remorse. I thought of the woman I’d seen with the little girl.

One woman. One child.

I thought about how a group could possibly persist for hundreds of years, taking women, holding them, until captive became monster. Lady Justice. The Pythia.

I thought about the fact that the woman I’d seen by the fountain hadn’t taken her child. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t asked for help.

She’d smiled at Nightshade.

There can only be one Pythia.

“You make them fight.” I wasn’t sure if I was profiling or talking to him. I wasn’t sure it mattered. “You take a new woman, a new Pythia, and…”

There can only be one.

“The woman,” I said. “The one I saw with you.” My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. “She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother.”

“We all have choices,” Nightshade replies. “The Pythia chooses to live.”

Why bring me here? I thought, aware, on some level, that my body was shaking. My eyes were wet. Why tell me this? Why give me a glimpse of something I’m not blessed enough to know?

“Perhaps someday,” Nightshade said, “that choice will be yours, Cassandra.”

Judd had been standing ramrod stiff beside me, but in that instant, he surged forward. He slammed the heel of his hand against the switch on the wall, and the pane darkened.

You can’t see us. I can see you, but you can’t see us.