I took one more deep breath. I hoped he was right.
Then I tightened my grip on the knife, and without any preamble, I twisted away and pointed the tip at Jack’s chest.
The surprise took a second to drop from his face, but when it did, he raised his hands in surrender. “You win.”
I dropped the knife to my side, and Jack’s eyes glowed with a look so affectionate, I wished more than anything I could at least hug him. Instead, I said, “Let’s go to Venice.”
CHAPTER 7
The moment the plane landed in Venice, everyone’s phones were buzzing. My father frowned and started making calls. Lydia was on her phone, too.
Once we were on the tarmac, I took advantage of their distraction to catch up to Jack. He, too, was staring at his screen. “What’s going on?”
His face was a terrible mix of shock and sadness. “It’s Dev Rajesh,” Jack said. “He was found dead early this morning. They think he was poisoned.”
My body went hot, then cold. “Oh no. No no no.” Not only was I failing my mom, I was failing the Circle. “It’s my fault.”
“It isn’t your fault. It isn’t our fault. It’s their fault. They’re terrorists,” Jack said, but he looked just as gutted as I felt.
I wrapped my necklace around my fingers and followed Jack to a waiting car, the knots of security around me noticeably tighter than they were yesterday. With all the Saxons on their phones, Jack and I ended up alone in a car together, and he draped his jacket in such a way that we could pretend to ignore each other and the driver couldn’t see us clinging to each other’s hands.
? ? ?
There were no cars in Venice. Starting at the edge of the city all transportation was by boat, down the wide, rippling Grand Canal running through the middle of the city or one of the small side canals that led to residential areas. Once we got to our hotel, I took a quick shower, and Lydia was waiting with her entire hair and makeup arsenal when I got out. Tonight, though, I didn’t feel much like getting ready for a party.
“Dev wouldn’t want you to be deterred by this,” Lydia said. She was dragging a brush through my hair, expertly pinning it into an elaborate updo. “He’d want you to get married and stop the Order. All the boys who have been killed—they’d want their sacrifice to make the Circle stronger.”
I raised my eyebrows at her in the mirror. I somehow doubted that anyone’s response to being attacked would be to hope I’d marry someone else. I guess I still had a lot to understand about the Circle. “It’s weird,” I said. “The Circle is so strong in every other way, but . . .” I didn’t know if I should say it. If she’d be offended. “If the only thing they can do about the assassinations is hope that some girl getting married to one of them stops it . . . Doesn’t that seem strange? It’s like the Order makes them weak.”
To my surprise, Lydia’s mouth curled into a smile. “It’s interesting that you see it that way. I disagree. You may not be able to tell yet, but the Circle is headed toward being stronger than we’ve been in a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Order hasn’t always been this powerful.” She pinned two braids together at the back of my head, and I watched to make sure she gathered up the section of hair that had been cut short at the wedding. I hated looking at it. “We’ve haven’t faced obstacles to our rule for centuries. It’s made us complacent. Do you know what first brought the Order into our consciousness again?”
I shook my head.
“My grandfather and my uncle. Just before I—” She glanced down at me. “Just before we were born, they were murdered by the Order. That’s how Father became the head of our family.”
I remembered Jack mentioning Alistair’s brother being killed, but he’d never mentioned that the Order had done it.
“Fighting the Order gives us a reason to come together,” Lydia went on. She crossed to a closet, where clothes that were obviously hers had been arranged. She pulled out a white dress with long sleeves and laid it on the bed.
I hadn’t thought about it that way. “You can’t mean you’re glad the Order is doing this, though.”
“No! But it’s our destiny to defeat the Order, just like it’s your destiny to be part of this fight, with our family.”
Last year in history class we’d learned about Manifest Destiny. It was the belief that it was inevitable—fated—for the United States to expand across North America, no matter who or what got in the way. It was an appealing thing—a powerful thing—knowing you had fate on your side.
And for the Circle, that fate was me. Their fates mapped together become the fate of the Circle—that was what the mandate said about the union between the girl with the purple eyes and the One. Destiny.