CHAPTER 56 GIGI #3
“There is only one way that Calla ever would have parted with this necklace,” Helena whispered, “and that is dead.”
“Bullshit.”
Gigi whipped her head toward the door. Knox. How long had he been there, listening?
“I saw her,” Gigi told Helena. “I saw Calla. I saw her eyes.” But Brady’s voice came back to Gigi, the skeptic desperate to believe: Heterochromia might be rare, but anyone with colored contacts could fake it.
And Gigi had never seen the Watcher’s face—not her face, not her hair, not anything but those eyes.
“You’re lying.” Every muscle in Knox’s face was taut. “Calla’s not dead.” His eyes were… wild. Gigi scampered to lay a careful hand on Knox’s back, but he didn’t even seem to feel it. He’s really in the dark place now.
“Knox Landry.” Helena looked him up and down.
“You and Calla were not meant to be. I had no objections to her sneaking out to the bayou. The skills Severin taught her should have given Calla a leg up at surviving her subsequent training and the Crucible. But you?” Helena shook her head at Knox. “You and Calla? That could not be.”
“Because I was nothing, and she was a Thorp.” Knox’s tone was borderline animal.
“Love of a man can be a liability in the Crucible, so before I sent Calla to train, I did what had to be done. I told her the ugly truth. I told her who you were—to her.”
“Nothing. I was nothing to Calla.”
“You were something much worse.” Helena’s gaze went back to that family portrait of her husband and her four young sons.
“You were four when your mother came here, demanding money from me. Had things been different, I might have made a one-time payment to secure you, but by that point, Calla was here. She was a girl at long last. I could not risk alienating my grandson Orion by airing his secrets. So I shut the Landry woman down and sent you both away.”
Helena had suggested to Gigi before that she would not have forgiven any of her sons or grandsons for having an illegitimate daughter. But a son?
“No.” Knox’s voice was beyond guttural.
Knox is Orion’s son? Gigi’s brain couldn’t keep up, and the muscles in her stomach wouldn’t stop twisting as she thought about the way that Orion Thorp had spoken to Knox, the way the man had backhanded him.
“When I told Calla the truth of her parentage and yours,” Helena continued, barely even looking at Knox, “she agreed it would be best for her to leave. She understood that what the two of you had—it was wrong. Calla did not have Orion’s blood, and you did not have his name, but the two of you, it could not be.
So I arranged for her disappearance and sent her to train.
Had she merely left, the idea of coming back might have proven too tempting.
But a missing girl can’t afford to be found, not if any part of her wants to disappear.
I told myself that Calla’s broken heart would mend.
Broken hearts become scarred ones every day.
If anything, I thought it would push her to become something new, to throw herself into her training and later, the Crucible.
I thought that would give her an advantage.
” Helena drew a labored breath. “It seems I was wrong.”
“Calla isn’t dead,” Knox roared. “And we weren’t—I’m not—”
“Reality is what it is.” Helena had no mercy for Knox, no sympathy for him. She reached back and unclasped the chain around her neck, then turned to hold the fleur-de-lis necklace out to Gigi.
“There is more than one way,” Helena said, lifting her chin, “to continue a family line. History tells the tale for a reason. A man who reads that tale, a man whose level of knowledge merits more than watching is quite unfortunate indeed. But a woman? Women may be warned. Some take that warning and stop looking, while it urges others to keep looking, to go deeper. Those very few who earn themselves answers, they are considered worthy heirs for family lines that might otherwise have none.”
Gigi could barely even process what Helena was saying, could barely process what she was being told—and offered.
“All those sons,” Helena said roughly. “All those grandsons and great-grandsons, and my only true heir, gone.”
Gigi understood now why Helena had told her as much as she had.
Gigi had refused to stop looking. She’d come back here, armed with information about the Crucible.
And the Thorp line of the Gilded Blade had no heir.
And Knox—Knox was a Thorp, and Helena had turned her back on him when he was just a child.
Haven’t you ever wanted, Gigi could hear the Woman in Red saying—not Calla, it wasn’t Calla—more?
Helena’s hand shook slightly. “Take the necklace, Ms. Grayson.”
“I don’t want it,” Gigi said, and this time, she meant it. She pressed herself into Knox’s side, willing herself to feel his pain so he didn’t have to feel it alone.
That mattered.
Helena Thorp stared at Gigi for the longest time. “Then know that I cannot be held responsible for what happens to you after the Crucible concludes, once there is a new Judge.” Helena dropped the fleur-de-lis necklace. “Perhaps a more brutal Judge.”