The car on the television screen, abandoned on the ferry. The body still in it. The police. Rolan’s face in the pixels. The voice on the phone.

Hallo, Audra.

But it wasn’t Rolan’s.

“Someone answered his phone after he was dead.”

“It was gone by the time I found him or I would’ve used it to reach you.” He’s speeding down the freeway, south, for lack of any other direction.

“You came to kill me in Maine,” I say.

“I did not come to kill you. I came to protect you. They were suspicious after your death—had already tracked Luka to Maine, pegged him as a traitor. They were coming for him and would have found you. I volunteered to take him out, but I came to the States for you.”

“You let me believe he was trying to kill me!”

“I had to get you away from him. To remember who you are. It was the only way to keep you alive.”

His hint that my adopted parents were in danger. His willingness to return me to the Center and retrieve my records. To kill Luka.

And now I have effectively killed him myself.

Everything I have done. The details of a life, obliterated. All for a single month of peace. In the end, all for nothing. I have saved no one.

“Why are you doing this?” I say wearily. “I know what you are! And there are no such things as Watchers.”

“Not by that name, no. But we have watched for centuries. Sympathetic to the Progeny plight. Without the resources to take down the Scions of the Dispossessed—until now.”

I shake my head. “Sympathetic to the plight . . .”

“We were monks, Audra.”

I give a harsh, abbreviated laugh. “I’ve heard that one before.”

He’s silent.

“I just saw you kill a man!”

But now I remember Rolan murmuring while I was still in hysterics over the sight of the body. I had thought it Croatian, Hungarian.

No. It was Latin.

“It has taken generations for us to make our way into the ranks of the Scions,” he says quietly. “To mingle bloodlines with families ancient enough for us to become the thing we have hated. I called us ‘Watchers’ more aptly than you know. We saw our course as a necessary evil, and broke from the order that we loved with the knowledge that this day would come. The Progeny will not survive another generation. Not just because of the Scions. Nikola’s gifts are gone, but he is still ambitious. He’ll deliver his own before giving up power. Few Progeny who live long enough ever reconcile losing their gifts. They’d rather be hunted than be common.”

My head is spinning.

“If you’ve been planning this for centuries, why didn’t Ivan know about you?”