“That was nice of him,” I murmured, wondering why no one had done it with me. Or Olivia.
“Oh, nice has nothing to do with it. Duty comes above all else for those raised in the Zodiac. Above family, spouse, or anything comprising a normal life. If something’s not good for the organization, then it’s simply not done. If it is, then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” Absently, she toyed with the small pearls circling her neck. “That’s why Warren’s so concerned about you. He’s put a lot of hope into you, you know. He doesn’t trust easily. Not to mention he’s risked a great deal.”
I hadn’t thought of that, actually. I’d been so preoccupied with my own worries and loss I hadn’t even considered what defending me might have cost him. “Like what?” I said, really wanting to know.
She gestured at me, letting the pearls drop. “Well, consider for a moment, what if he’s wrong? Then he’s brought a wolf into our midst. A Shadow among the Light.”
“I’m not a Shadow,” I said irritably.
“But are you Light?”
I didn’t answer. How could I know?
She smiled kindly and laid a hand over my own. “Look, I can only imagine what this has all been like for you, but if Warren seems a bit brusque it’s because his primary concern is keeping this troop safe. He’s looking for reasons his star signs are being killed off. His duty as a leader is to protect them, and so far he’s failing.”
“Tekla said there was a traitor.”
Greta look startled, then relaxed when she realized what I was saying. “You mean in the manual you read? Right before Ajax found you?”
I nodded, and she rose to pour us more tea. “Poor Tekla,” she said as she took my cup from my hand. “She’s not even with the troop anymore.”
“She’s not?”
She began shaking her head, then paused. “Well, she’s here, of course—she’d be a danger to herself and the entire troop were she to be released outside the sanctuary—but Warren’s had her tucked away in the sick ward since shortly after Stryker was killed.”
Something in her tone caught my attention. “You don’t agree with that?”
Greta shrugged, but it wasn’t smooth, and she absently fingered her pearls again. “She rants whenever she sees anyone, of course. And she says the most awful, accusing things. Still…I don’t know. I think she’s in there somewhere, desperate to get out. I’d rather help her than lock her away. Maybe someday I can.”
So there was no traitor. Just a heartsick woman who’d had to watch her son die before her eyes.
She returned to my side, again handing me my cup, sighing to herself as I accepted it. “You seem like a sweet girl, Olivia. But if there’s one piece of advice I would give you, it’s this: nobody’s really what they seem.” She stood motionless as she looked at me hard, willing me to understand. “Take Warren, for example. When he’s out there in the real world he looks and acts and, unfortunately, smells like a career bum. You look at him and see exactly what you’d expect roosting on the corner of Casino Center Drive.
“Meanwhile he’s working day and night to stop the Shadows from injuring or influencing mortal lives and thoughts. If he can’t do that, he works to hide the resulting destruction. Covers it under a veil of confusion or bad luck, so there’s nothing or no one to strike out at—because, you know, that’s what the Shadows ultimately want. For their handiwork—destruction and chaos—to snowball. For human emotion to turn sour so they can feed off that negative energy.”
“But what he does isn’t right either,” I said, frowning because Warren had done the same to me; set me up—or, at least, let me be set up—to take the fall for Olivia’s death. “He tricked me into choosing all this. He played with my life just as much as the Shadows play with others’.”
“Ah,” she said, pulling her sweater tighter across her chest. “Now you’ve hit on the crux of what makes Warren tick. See, he cares more about the whole of humanity than he does about the individual person. To him the universe is a scale that must constantly be kept in balance. Choice, mortals’ and ours, is a secondary consideration.”
I drew back. “But that’s…ruthless.”
“Well, there are things in Warren’s past that make ruthlessness a virtue,” she said, and before I could ask what those things were, held up a hand, shaking her head. “Not my story to tell. Besides, the point is, what else can you be but ruthless when dealing with enemies who toss mortals around like pawns on a chessboard?”
She frowned, realizing that was exactly how I felt, and shot me a small, apologetic smile. “For what it’s worth, there are others who feel as you do. Their thought regarding humans is, ‘But for one step down on the evolutionary chain, there go I.’ But Warren’s the troop leader, and they’re not.”
And Warren’s actions made a sort of twisted sense now that I knew more about him and his responsibilities. Would I have put the troop before myself? Probably not, which was why he hadn’t given me the choice. Would I agree that ruthlessness could be deemed a virtue? Probably not, which was why Greta wouldn’t share with me the particulars of Warren’s past. I sighed.
“Look,” Greta said, watching me carefully, as if reading my thoughts. “The deaths of our senior troop members have everyone rattled. It means we’re vulnerable. It means change. It means we might have to take on rogue agents, and there are some who are vehemently opposed to that.”
“And Chandra is one of those,” I guessed.
“Ah, Chandra.” She nodded slowly. “She’s painfully obvious, isn’t she?”
“I mistook her for a man when we first met.”
Greta winced. “Well, she wouldn’t have liked you in any case…even if you’d mistaken her for Miss America. Before your whereabouts were known, she was next in line to be the Archer. Your arrival has thrust her into a sort of noman’s-land, and she now has to carve out a new place for herself in this troop. But first we must allow her to mourn what she’s lost.”
I made a surrendering gesture. “Hey look, if she wants it that badly, she can have the honor.”
“No, she can’t,” Greta said, shaking her head as she forced me to meet her gaze. “Your lineage is stronger, and the laws are clear. We only go outside the existent bloodline if the entire house has been wiped out. Your mother was one of us, and the manuals have foretold your arrival. Read them, you’ll see. Your duty now is to fulfill that legacy. Ours is to show you how.”
I wanted to believe her, but her words and their meaning were having trouble getting past my own muddled thoughts. With the fall down the Slipper, the warm tea settling in my belly, and the shock of being attacked by Ajax again, it was too much. Thankfully, Greta sensed that.
“Sleep now,” she said, getting to her feet. “You need rest. Tomorrow you’ll see the grounds.”
I leaned my head back against the pillow and let out a deep sigh as she took the teacup from my hand, then set a corner lamp burning low. The birds had settled again and were chirping softly to themselves, and the scent of roses clouded my brain even after I heard the soft snick of the door clicking shut behind her. By then my head was too heavy to lift, and I gladly let myself drift away from thoughts of duty and legacies and women who looked like men, and into the safety of my own mind.
I slept that night with more soundness and peace than I had since awakening in my sister’s body, and it was probably due to Greta’s soft words, her tea, and the sense that even though I’d nearly been fried in the process, I was finally in a place where I was relatively safe. I know I dreamt, but there was nothing of reason or memory or meaning in the dreams, only my body healing itself in the long midnight hours, and the scent of warm roses overlying it all.
Then I crawled into the second half of the night.
I heard them yelling from my room in the opposite wing of the house, their voices stacking up on one another’s just as they had that first time a decade earlier. The novelty of hearing my mother actually standing up to Xavier had been enough to have me tiptoeing through the halls to their bedroom, and the interest sparked when I heard my name ping-ponging between them kept me there. I centered an eye between the gap in the door and leaned forward, careful not to bump it with my growing belly.