“But thesourceof the issue,” Grayson finished, “whatever has compromised the Woman in White’s judgment—that’s a different issue.”
“Us,” Jameson said hoarsely. “We’re the source. Alice saved Toby, saved hersonyears ago. She spared me in Prague. She revealed herself to her husband and allowed the old man to discover far too much. She’s been skirting the line for years, ever since she went back in, and then…”
Then, Lyra thought,I happened. Eve did.Eve had armed the Watcher with what Lyra and Grayson had managed to piece together, andmenwho knew certain things about the Gilded Blade—they weren’t allowed to live.
“The Judge is called the Monoceros, named for the astrological unicorn, for her judgment must be pure,” Nora recited. “And if that judgment needs to bepurified, it is the Kyrie line who does it. If you look to history, you can see evidence of what the line is capable of every now and then: powerful families destroyed, bloodlines wiped from existence, either slowly or all at once. Dynasties, ended. But the Kyrie are bound by ancient rules, and Alice knows them well. It’s apparent enough that she called the Crucible so that her family’s lives might be bargained for, eliminating the need for her to render judgment at all.”
Lyra returned back to the first thing Gigi had ever told them about Nora. “You said that it was supposed to be you. Alice’s Candidate for the Crucible. It was supposed to be you, but she had to choose Avery instead.”
“Candidates may only bargain for those with whom they have a close, personal connection,” Nora replied. “A lone kiss—that would never count. And thus, my mentor, the woman who plucked me from hell, the woman who trained me, she went back on what she’d promised me. Years of planning wiped out in an instant.”
“Your plans?” Grayson asked. “Or Alice’s?”
Nora shrugged. “How would I even know?”
Lyra couldn’t help thinking that Nora talked about Alice Hawthorne like the woman’s ability to influence the way things unfolded was unparalleled, like Alice might have her fingerprints onanythingandeverything, if she left prints at all.
“You said you wanted to tear it all down,” Gigi said suddenly, staring at Nora with saucer-wide eyes. “That was your plan. And Alice, she sent you that cryptic message to tell you that I’d drawn the interest of one of the other Ascendants.”
“And because of you,” Nora replied, “your brother was on my mind, and when I lookedhimup.…” Nora caught Lyra’s eyes and held them.“I foundyou. I cannot help but notice that your name is all over this board—and all over the internet. I have no idea who you are to Alice, to the Gilded Blade, but I need to ask: Have you received any flowers lately?”
The calla lily.Lyra didn’t answer, but Nora’s expression shifted like she had.
“Let’s return,” Grayson suggested, “to what precisely you meant when you told my sister you wanted totear it all down.”
“The current Omega,” Nora said, addressing her words to Grayson and only Grayson, “cannot be allowed to become the Monoceros. The Handcannotbecome the Judge.”
“Why not?” Jameson demanded at the exact time that Grayson said: “Who is she?”
“In my time with the Kyrie, I knew her only as the Lily, cloaked always in red,” Nora said. “I do not know who she is or who she once was, but I do know she took to her training far too well. I know where her loyalty lies, and I know that the current head of the Kyrie believes that the Gilded Blade can and should be more aggressive.”
It was perfectly clear what Nora meant byaggressive, but Grayson asked anyway. “Tell me about her, the head of your family line.”
“It was never truly mine.” Nora met his gaze. “And she’s the kind of person who murdered her own husband in cold blood years ago when he brought home a little girl he’d conceived with another woman abroad.”
Grayson stared at Nora for a long moment. “And what happened to that little girl?”
“Her stepmother took her in,” Nora replied, “and trained her as one of the Kyriebecausethat training can be so very brutal—more brutal for some than others.”
Nora pushed up the sleeve on her black shirt to reveal an arm completely covered in scars—dozens of them, and Lyra knew, just looking at those scars, that the rest of Nora’s all-black outfit hid the same.
“Five and a half years ago,” Nora said, “when Alice saved me, when she chose me for a different sort of training, I thought I knew why. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps not. But my only chance to do whatIset out to do is the Crucible.” Nora did not expand on that. “The third Candidate—ithasto be me.” Nora turned her head to rake her eyes back over the whiteboards. “And if you’re no longer an option for the Omega,” Nora told Lyra, “it still can be.”
An instant later, Grayson had an arm locked around Nora’s neck.
“That wasn’t a threat,” Nora told him. “It was a request that you keep herhere, safe and sound and locked away behind security that will soon be utterly flawless. Do that, keep the Omega from accessing Lyra, and everything can still go according to plan.”
“Your plan?” Grayson asked, releasing her. “Or Alice’s?”
“I’d like to think it’s mine,” Nora replied.
Grayson put himself squarely between Nora and Lyra—and Lyra let him.
“Does Avery live?” Jameson asked, his voice dangerously low. “In your plan—does Avery walk away from this alive?”
“I’d like to think she does,” Nora replied. “And that’s why you’re going to let me walk out of here.”
“You sound awfully confident of that,” Grayson told her.