“ASH?” I SAY, when I’m back in my room. I wait a beat, but there’s no response.

I check the window and under the beds and return to the empty common room. On the floor in front of the fireplace, written in ash, are the words Be back soon. I smile at the cleverness and rub out the message with the bottom of my boot.

My conversation with Matteo cycles through my thoughts. My parents were next in line to lead their Families. They were the best in this school. I can’t even imagine what their lives were like before they had me and before they became the Romeo and Juliet of the Strategia world. I need to talk to my dad. I have so many questions, so many missing details from Matteo’s story to fill in.

Sending me to the Academy makes no sense at all. My family was in hiding—why put me in the one place where I’d be exposed to the very people who are a threat? Matteo was right that I resemble my mom: if he could pick me out, surely others can, too. I keep thinking about what Blackwood said, that strange things happen on purpose. Matteo said Blackwood knows who I am, which she must if she attended the Academy at the same time as my parents. But why let me in? She must have known that the shit would hit the fan as soon as the Lions and the Bears recognized me.

I head for the breakfast table and pull out a chair.

But Blackwood also gave me information about the glass and the match, and she quoted my history teacher. Plus, Ash told me that she’s a Bear herself. I tap my fingers on the table. There has to be a specific reason, a message she was trying to communicate. Strategia aren’t random; I’ve learned that much. So I’m just missing the pattern, some subtle difference, as my dad would say.

I think back to my first history class, when Kartal said strange things happen on purpose. She was talking about coincidences in historical contexts and how people love to believe them and exaggerate them. And she said that if you could pull off a crime and make it look like a coincidence, it was a brilliant achievement. Was she trying to tell me something? What if she was hinting about the murder happening just after I arrived, and people wanting to link it to me and exaggerate the details—which, as it turns out, wound up being true?

Then there was the story of the decoy body being dropped to the Spanish during World War II with fake plans to invade Greece. The entire plan relied on the fact that the people who found the body wouldn’t do the inspection they needed to do. Just like I didn’t examine Stefano thoroughly when I discovered his body, not like Layla would have. And it wasn’t until Layla asked the right questions that we figured out Stefano had been killed hours earlier and planted in that hallway, eventually leading us to his room, and to the fact that Charles was actually after Matteo.