“I know, right?” Lu fingered a lock of her hair. Without all the weight, her head felt as if it were floating above her shoulders, light as air. She had to admit she liked the feeling, though she felt unduly exposed, her neck bare to the cool air, her nape naked. She also had to admit she wanted to be angry with Honor for doing something so drastic, but wasn’t.

She got it now. She had her sister’s number. That hardcore, badass act wasn’t fooling her anymore. Beneath that icy façade was just a girl who felt everything a little too much, and didn’t know how to handle it.

Morgan’s gaze flicked to the floor in front of the vanity. She saw the knife and the braid, glanced over at Honor, then looked back at Lu. “Well,” she said, her composure recovered, “it suits you. Now you look like Princess Di.”

“Who?”

Morgan waved a hand, stepping into the room. “Never mind. Listen, I came to talk to you about something.” She hesitated, then amended, “Actually I came to offer you something.”

“Let’s sit,” suggested Lu, her curiosity piqued by the tone of Morgan’s voice. She gestured toward the sofa and chairs Honor still paced around, but Morgan shook her head.

“I’ll only stay a moment, I know you’re getting ready to leave. There’s just . . .”

Her lovely face clouded, and Lu’s heart rate spiked. “What? What’s wrong?”

“No,” she said gently, taking Lu’s hands. “Pet, there’s nothing wrong.” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “Besides everything, of course.” She glanced down at their joined hands, inhaled a deliberate breath, then quietly said, “I want you to have it.”

“Have what?” asked Lu, perplexed.

Morgan lifted her eyes and fixed Lu in her green, green stare. “My Gift.”

A beat of astonished silence followed this declaration as Lu and Honor stared at Morgan, processing what she’d said.

“No,” Lu said, but Morgan was already shaking her head.

“You don’t even know what it is yet. And believe me when I say it can come in incredibly handy.”

Lu withdrew her hands, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s kind of you to offer, really, but—”

“Take it,” Honor cut in suddenly. Lu turned, and found Honor staring at her with fierce, frozen intent, her cheeks still wet. “Morgan’s right: Her Gift is amazing. And much more subtle than ours. It’s perfect for what you’re about to do. Take it. Drain her.”

Drain her? Lu felt vaguely insulted. “I’m not some kind of vampire—”

“Yes,” Honor interrupted, her voice hard, “you are.”

Lu opened her mouth to protest, but then she thought of the pilot’s memory. She thought of Magnus’s mental shield. She thought of how she’d learned to play the piano, and fluently speak the several languages she’d never once studied.

She tucked her bare hands under her armpits, and turned away from Morgan, her cheeks heating in embarrassment. “I don’t want to be this weird . . . collector.”

“Her Gift of Suggestion is one of the best.” Honor’s voice still rang with that hard edge, but now also held a pleading undertone. “Anyone would kill to have it—”

“If it’s so special, you take it!”

“I can’t!”

It hung there in the air, throbbing with import, tapering away into silence while Lu and Honor stared at one another and Morgan waited in quiet stillness near the door.

“I don’t have that Gift,” said Honor, her voice soft. “Believe me, I’ve tested it. I’ve tried. I can’t do what you can do.”

“But . . . Caesar . . .” Morgan floundered, at a loss for words, staring at Honor, obviously struggling to understand.

Honor slowly shook her head. “That wasn’t me. That was Hope.”

Morgan’s eyes had gone wide. She whispered, “So Hope took Caesar’s Gift of Immortality . . .”

“And then we killed him,” finished Honor, her voice hollow.

A tingle of horror swept up Lu’s spine. “Killed him?” she repeated slowly.

Seeing her expression, Honor said, “You’ve never heard of Caesar?”

Lu shook her head.

Morgan came closer, her expression dark. “He was a murderer. He was one of us, but he wanted to rule the world, and he slaughtered a lot of high-profile humans in his quest for power. And he planned to kill your parents, and you, though you were just little babies—”

“Why would he want to kill us?” Lu looked back and forth between Morgan and Honor.

Morgan said, “Because your mother was the Queen.”

Lu just stared at her, speechless.

“She still is, in fact. But once Caesar found out he was Gifted with Immortality, he plotted to kill her, and take over the entire world, Ikati and human both. We’d lived in secrecy and silence for thousands of years, hidden in small colonies like this one, but Caesar decided he was done with all that. It was he who betrayed us to Sebastian Thorne. It was he who started the war between our two species. His insanity is the reason behind every terrible thing that’s befallen us in the last twenty-five years, and there’s not a day that’s gone by that I don’t give thanks that that son of a bitch is dead.”

A log settled lower in the grate. The fire sighed and released a knot of orange sparks. And inside of Lu, memory was knitting together with abrupt concrescence, like fingers interlacing, or a key fitting into a well-oiled lock.

She asked, “It was the day before the Flash, wasn’t it? When Caesar tried to kill us?”

Morgan looked startled. “How did you know?”

There were pictures in Lu’s mind, a series of images she’d carried with her for as long as she could remember. The images had always seemed nonsensical, a collage of unrelated items, like photos pasted into a scrapbook: a snapshot of a man with black hair and midnight eyes, standing atop the crenellated tower of a crumbling kasbah in the desert, staring up at the star-dusted sky; the same man clutching a tiny baby to his chest in a strangely elegant tree house in the darkest heart of a jungle, his face twisted with rage; a long, wavering line of pinprick lights that weren’t stars twinkling on the morning horizon; a soundless flight over a landscape of emerald green, bisected by the sinuous black twist of a sluggish river; a charming house surrounded by flowers on the edge of a small village, its front door painted yellow.

The sky a blazing pulse of color, flashing scarlet to orange to brilliant, blinding white.

Lu had always assumed these pictures were things she’d conjured from the imaginary worlds she visited in books, or perhaps remnants of long-ago dreams, or random snippets of forgotten songs, her mind creating images from read or spoken words. But now she saw the pictures for what they really were: memories.

Only not her own. Her mother’s. She’d stolen them from her.

Lu crossed slowly to the white duvet, sank into its plump, welcome cushions, and stared into the fire.

“Pet? Are you all right?”

Numb with recognition, Lu whispered, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? Seeing as how I just realized that the first time I killed a man, I was barely more than one year old.”

“We,” said Honor. She sat beside her on the sofa, took her hand, and squeezed it. “We did it. Together. And Morgan is right: He deserved it. I’d kill him again if I could.”

A sound worked its way from Lu’s throat. It was part laugh, part choke, part cry of disbelief. She thought of the helicopter pilot, that red bubble at the corner of his mouth, and had to close her eyes to contain the tears that pricked beneath her lids.

How many more people will I kill in my lifetime? Is that what I am? A murderer, like Caesar?

No, came Honor’s firm reply. You’re a warrior. Like me. And sometimes warriors get their hands bloody, but the difference is that a murderer kills because he wants to. A warrior only kills when he has to, to protect himself, or the ones he loves.

Lu opened her eyes and gazed at her sister, whose mouth had curved into a smile.