I pull ahead to walk beside her, but I don’t know what to say. “That sucks. I know Gaia was all about balance and everything, but that seems pretty heartless, even for her.”

“Yeah, well . . . she and Lyon had their reasons,” she mutters.

“Why would Lyon have had anything to do with your placement?”

Kai looks at me askance. “It’s not important. Water under the bridge, right?”

Maybe. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is odd about it. “What’s the deal with your sister’s name? Not that I’m one to talk, but I thought Ruby was a Summer name. You know, like the birthstone.”

“Ruby’s her real name,” Kai says curtly. “And that’s how I remember her.”

“Believe me, I get it.” If anyone understands the significance of a name here, it’s me. “What does she go by now? I know most of the Winters in my hemisphere. Maybe I can find out which room she’s in.” There are only a few hundred Winters on campus. She shouldn’t be hard to find.

“Professor Lyon said she goes by the name Névé. Névé Onding.”

My breath leaves me. Kai plods ahead, turning over her shoulder to see why I’ve stopped. My eyes dart over her face . . . her cheeks, her nose, the dip in her chin. I swallow hard, my mind pushing away all the small resemblances that seem so obvious now. This can’t be Névé’s sister. Not the same Névé that Amber killed at the cabin.

My throat’s tight as I remember the feel of Névé’s limp mouth against mine, the magic on her breath when I took it as she died.

I look away. At the wall. At the floor. Anywhere but at Kai’s face, so I won’t have to see traces of her sister in it. “You talked to the professor about her?”

“In secret. He helped us exchange letters for a while.”

It sounds like something Lyon would have done for one of his favorite students. Like something he would have done for me. That knowledge stirs a fresh wave of guilt inside me. Lyon knew Kai and Névé before I even got here. Not just in passing, but closely. Maybe as closely as he knew me. Yet when I’d called him from the pay phone behind the bar in Oklahoma—when I’d confessed that Névé was dead and I had taken her magic—he hadn’t said a word. Not to me or to Kai. Why didn’t Lyon break the news to her when she came out of stasis? Unless he was just trying to protect me. . . .

He said if I keep you safe, you’ll help me free my sister.

Her sister. My smaze.

Did Lyon send Kai to find me—to help me—because he knew we’d be searching for the same thing?