“You wanted a daughter.” Gigi tried to make the piece fit. “You waited for a girl for generations. Because you were hoping she’d…ascend?”
“It was my hope that Calla would be chosen for the Crucible, but I never assumed she would ascend. After my own Crucible, I was placed into the Thorp family specifically because of this family’s history with the Blade. It was the Blade who sent the Thorps from New York to Louisiana in the wake of the Civil War. It was a woman in the Thorp line who bought up what would become St. Adelaide Parish and razed the local plantations to the ground to remake this place as something new. By nineteen fifty-one, however, the Thorp’s female line had died out, so I married in. And yes, I raised Calla with an end in mind, and when she was of age, I told her the truth of the legacy she was due to inherit and sent her to Europe for further training.”
“Europe,” Gigi repeated, her mind going suddenly to Nora, who had obviously had a lot oftraining. “What part of Europe?” There was no reply. “Northern Europe?” Gigi paused. “Iceland?” Gigi thought of Calla’s necklace, which had been Helena’s once and Vega’s before that.She thought about Vega’s very old, very dangerous family, about Nora’s reaction to the version of the fleur-de-lis that Brady had etched into the dust-covered floorboards.
About the fact that Nora had been promised a spot in the Crucible bysomeone.
“You sent Calla to Vega’s family?” Gigi said. “Or did you send her to Vega?”
“By the time Calla was of age, Vega was no more.” Helena brought her hand back to rest on the deck of cards. “It is not unheard of for one of the Ascendants to train a Candidate in the years leading up to the Crucible, but such things are rare and reserved primarily for Candidates who do not have the blood. For those who come from an existing family line, training must be found elsewhere.”
How many families? How many lines? What kind of training?Gigi forced herself to slow down. “And Vega’s family—”
“Theirs is a special role in the Blade,” Helena said quietly. “One I knew about only because of Vega. Their training methods can be quite brutal.”
Gigi thought again of Nora—how fast she was, the fact that even Rohan said she fought like anelite, those sentimental knives of hers.Is that what happened to Calla?Gigi thought.Is that what made her the way she is now? Thosebrutaltraining methods?
Out loud, Gigi opted for another question, one that might tell her more about the way the Gilded Blade operated. “If Calla was due to inherit your line with or without the Crucible,” Gigi said, “why would you have wanted her to be chosen for it, if not toascend?”
“Surviving the Crucible, it would havemadeCalla.”
“Surviving.”There it was again, the suggestion that the Crucible was something that unworthy Candidates did not survive. But Gigi didn’t want to believe that. “But everyonesurvivesthe Crucible—or almost everyone, right? One person wins, two lose, all are forged, spider, web, etcetera, etcetera.Right?”
“The individual is not the only thing that is forged,” Helena said.“Those who come through the Crucible alive—they are bound together in ways that I cannot describe. Whether the Crucible lasts a week or a year, it leaves you as sisters on a level far deeper than blood.”
“Sisters,” Gigi repeated, and her brain made the leap with lightning speed. “Zella. If she and Calla weresisters, once upon a time, then Zella was a Candidate, too.”
And that means she’s one of them.Gigi’s mind went to Savannah, who’d been headed for London—for the duchess.Savannah and Rohan and Brady—they don’t know.
“This is wrong,” Gigi said, unable to hold the words back. “You know that, right? The Crucible, the Gilded Blade—all of this is wrong.”
“Is it?” Helena looked down at the deck on the table and began drawing cards, one after another until she came to a king. “Do you know what this is?”
“The king of diamonds,” Gigi said. Her heart was racing, and it wouldn’t stop.
“The world has always been full of men who fancy themselveskings,” Helena said. “Destined to rule—over their fellow men, certainly, but also in their own homes. And though a king is one of the most powerful cards in the deck, there are games in which a single king can be defeated by a pair of lowly twos.” Helena rearranged all the cards that were face up, gathering them by suit. “In poker, a flush beats a straight every time.”
“Strength in numbers.” Gigi thought about family lines, about the forging of Candidates.
“Strength in numbers,” Helena repeated.“History tells the tale.”
History.Gigi thought about Saint Adelaide—one of the most powerful women of theMiddle Ages.
“Exactly how old is the Gilded Blade?” The hairs on the back of Gigi’s neck stood up. “How big is the web?” Helena didn’t answer, and Gigi thought her heart might break through her rib cage.Centuries of spiders. Centuries of webs. They could be anywhere—everywhere.
They could be anyone.
And it made no sense whatsoever that Helena Thorp was telling Gigi any of this. “I firmly believe that you are not going to kill me,” Gigi declared firmly and/or hopefully.
“Only the Hand may take a life, and only with the assent of the Judge,” Helena said, like that was supposed to be comforting. “And I notified no one when you returned here last night.”
“Why?” Gigi said.
“Because you remind me of her,” Helena said softly. “Vega. Not the Vega who ascended, but the Vega who was raw. A light in the darkness, despite the way she was raised. You remind me a great deal of Vega, before.”
Before the Crucible, Gigi thought.Before either of you had been forged.
“More than twenty years, she’s been gone. Each time a Crucible was called, I knew. As Vega went from Watcher to Hand to Judge, I knew. And when it was her last cycle, when she made the call, her final call—I knew.” Helena’s hand crept back to the fleur-de-lis at her neck. “That is how it works, you see, how it has always worked. Watcher to Hand to Judge. Lily to Omega to Monoceros. And when the Woman in White is ready to greet death, when she has determined that she can judge no more—that is when the cycle begins anew.”