No one spoke again. There was only the sound of two pairs of footsteps and the slam of the door. I smirked at Cynnia, who was watching me, no expression on her weary face.

“Alone at last,” I said.

“You’re not going to kill me,” Cynnia boldly announced, lifting her chin in a moment of bravery.

I laughed at her, tossing my head back as I resettled myself on the floor with my legs crossed before me. “Of course I’m going to kill you eventually. But for now, you seem willing to help me, and if you haven’t guessed yet, I’ll take all the help I can get to keep your sister Aurora locked in her own realm. I’ll also take any help I can get against Rowe, so it seems we’re on the same side.”

“Like you and Danaus. He’s a nightwalker hunter, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but there’s a very distinct difference between you and Danaus.” Smiling again, I leaned forward so my elbows rested on my knees. “I don’t hate Danaus with every fiber of my being. What happens between Danaus and I is still up in the air. When this is over, I’d be willing to let him walk away. You? Not so much.”

“So, what can I do to prolong my life?” Cynnia asked.

“Take a look at these.” I handed over the pictures of the trees that Danaus had shown me just a few months ago, the ones that started me down this long horrible journey. There were twelve different pictures of twelve different types of trees. Each tree had a different symbol carved into it. Neither Danaus nor I had been able to figure out what it meant, but now we at least had a naturi at our disposal. The mystery might finally be solved.

Cynnia slowly moved, crossing her legs before her as well so she could more easily spread the photos out on the floor before her. She flipped through each one, her eyes pausing over a symbol for less than a second before moving on to the next.

“Trees,” she murmured. That had pretty much been my reaction, but I hadn’t expected it out of the naturi. This was their handwriting. It had to mean something to her.

“I noticed that the pictures were of trees as well,” I said between clenched teeth as I struggled to keep my temper under control. “I was hoping you could enlighten us as to what the symbols meant.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have said that she was toying with me.

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure? How can you not be sure?” I grabbed up a few of the photos and shook them at her. “This is your language, isn’t it? Your writing?”

“Yes, but some of them are just symbols used in spells. I’m not that strong a spell weaver. I know enough to protect myself, it’s all I was ever taught.”

And suddenly that struck me as odd. Why hadn’t Aurora seen to it that her youngest sister was well-versed in their own magical arts? Cynnia had never tried to physically attack us, and she had cooperated with Danaus during her one chance to escape when her manacles were off. Had Aurora purposefully kept her little sister weak? It was a thought I was content to let stew for a while.

Spreading the twelve pictures out between us in three neat little rows, I drew in a slow, steadying breath. I caught a whiff of her own unique scent this time over the stale scent of dust and some kind of cleaning product from the nearby bathroom. She smelled of spring rain and yellow tulips. “Can you read any of this?” I asked, feeling a little calmer.

“Yes, some of these are words, but I don’t know what order any of this goes in.” She picked up one picture that looked like a birch tree. “This one means ‘open,’ and this one means ‘welcome,’” she continued, picking up another picture of what appeared to be a type of palm tree. Cynnia put those two pictures aside and scanned over the rest. “This one over here refers to a ‘weary traveler,’” she said, putting aside a picture of blue spruce.

As she pulled pictures out of the three rows, I carefully rearranged them before her so she could clearly see each one. None of it made sense to me so far, but I was hoping that as we identified more pieces of this puzzle, a picture would become clear.

“There isn’t a clear translation for this one between our two languages,” she said, pulling up one that looked like a maple tree.

“Can you give me something close?”

“Maybe…‘forgotten path.’ Or ‘hidden road.’”

That didn’t feel particularly reassuring, and a knot twisted in my stomach. I had yet to guess what the naturi were up to with this assortment of pictures, and I felt more anxious the closer we drew to the evening of the equinox and the coming sacrifice. Rowe had something special planned up his sleeve.

With the pictures whittled down to two rows of four, I noticed that Cynnia had stopped picking them up, her brow furrowed in concentration as she stared at each one. Every once in a while she would rearrange them into a particular order and then shake her head again, as whatever she was looking for failed to appear.

“Is there anything else here that you recognize?”

She sighed, her eyes slowly traveling over the remaining eight pictures. I noticed that her hand trembled slightly when she reached for one picture that was on my far left. I had always hated that picture. It was hard to tell from the darkness of the image, but it looked like the symbol had been carved into the dark, thick bark of a live oak tree, just like one of the hundreds of live oaks that dotted the historical district of my beloved Savannah.

“This one means ‘home,’” she said, then shook her head. “But not just the idea of home as the place where you live. It’s home as in Earth—our home.”

Nodding, I took the picture from her and added it to the pile that she had already identified. “What about the rest?”

“Just magical symbols. They don’t equal words, ideas, or phrases to me. They’re used for some kind of spell.”

“Spell? Not message?”

“I doubt it’s a message of any kind unless the naturi on this side have developed their own kind of shortened language or base of symbols. It’s possible, but it looks like these trees are from all over the globe. You would need to see most if not all of the message to make sense of it. I’ve seen it all and it doesn’t make sense to me,” she admitted. She picked up one of the pictures that she couldn’t identify and shook her head before putting it back on the floor. “I’ve thought about the symbol and what it resembles, and the potential relation to the type of tree that it’s in, but I’m coming up with nothing. Why are some easily identifiable words and the rest is just nonsense?”

“I need answers, Cynnia, not more questions,” I snapped, resting my head against my hand while placing my elbow on my right knee.

“Sorry.”

I glared up at her, curling my lip up to reveal one of my fangs. She quickly held up her manacled hands as if to ward me off.

“I’m serious. I’m sorry that I can’t help you with this. Helping you means that I get to stay alive a little bit longer.”

“So you’re willing to sell out your own kind just so you can live a little while longer?”

“No,” she quickly said, then frowned as she looked down at the iron manacles on her wrists. “Not really.” She drew in a slow breath and closed her eyes, holding back tears that I saw suddenly rise to the surface. “I’ve not told you anything that would endanger my people. They’ve cast some kind of spell using symbols in trees, but I can’t tell you what the spell is. It’s honestly beyond my knowledge.”

“And if it wasn’t? If you could identify the spell, would you tell me?” I asked, straightening my back as I watched her closely.

“I—I don’t know,” Cynnia replied. “I don’t know what I would do. Yes, they’re my people and I know I should do everything within my power to protect them. And according to our laws, that means killing any nightwalker or human that we come into contact with. Yet, they’ve called me a traitor when I’ve done nothing to betray them.” She shook her head and a tear slipped out from beneath her right eyelid, which she quickly wiped away with a jangle of chains. “They left me for dead, to be killed by the infamous Fire Starter, because they were too afraid to kill their queen’s sister. They left you to do their dirty work, sure you would give me a tortured and gruesome end.”