The subtle rhythms of mountain life were becoming clearer over the days. There were only five hours of daylight on the mountain, which Cara was allowed to spend playing as she pleased, often accompanied by the wolves, which were like overgrown house pets that came and went as they pleased. Marsaid had more freedom than that. She spent up to an hour before and after sunrise in the garden, her favorite place, tending to the many plants therein.

Jasper found her there that morning, sitting cross-legged under one of the apple trees. On her lap she had a basket which she was patching with water-softened sticks.

Jasper sat down adjacent to her and Marsaid held out a gloved hand in greeting. Personal touching was common on the mountain; far more so than in the outer world. But instead of a touch on the arm or shoulder, Marsaid greeted him with a hand on the neck. It was a token of trust and appreciation, to place a hand on another being's pulse point (be there a pulse or not).

"Did you sleep well?"

Marsaid shrugged. "The bigger Pecca gets, the worse she snores." She set a stick between her teeth to hold it and began weaving its fellow into the existing wicker.

"How does it work?" Jasper asked suddenly.

She dropped the stick from her teeth to her palm. "I thought you were going to tell me about your hometown?"

"Answer mine, and I'll answer yours," he bargained. Marsaid thought on that for a second before she nodded.

"How does what work?"

"Magic. Witchcraft. Whatever it is you do."

"Why do you sound so desperate?"

"Carlisle offended Luce and Aradottir. Cecelia has placed a condition of their forgiveness on our continued welcome here."

Marsaid only shrugged. "They will forgive you. Aradottir is the forgiving type, and Luce is bad at holding grudges."

Jasper knew he should have known better, but it felt distinctly unusual to hear the twins referred to as separate people.

"Are you going to answer?"

Marsaid sighed a great sigh and closed her eyes. She breathed out slowly, expelling whatever was necessary to create the aura of peace around her that Jasper found so relaxing. This was a storyteller settling down for a great tale, the way Billy Black had naturally borne the words of his ancestor's tales.

"The world operates on a constant stream of ever-moving energy," she began. "Witches are nothing more than those who sense this energy more than others. We are born of a different place in the universe." She paused then, and smiled without showing her teeth. "Did you know witches are born with such an innate knowledge of the universe that the Guard have long said, ‘Witches are born wise, and then they grow old.'" Her smile faded with a hint of embarrassment. "We spend years learning to work whatever capacity we have for this universal energy stream, be it in the elements, in the mind, without borders, or across distance. The vibrations of the earth and everything around it are as natural to me as the breeze is to you." Marsaid smiled and held her hand out to the gentle wind that skimmed through the trees. "And when we work our first great spell, the clan recognizes us officially as a full witch, ready to take responsibility for the destiny of our kind."

Marsaid looked out into the distance and pointed. "Do you see that great pine?" She meant the thick-trunked, healthy tree that towered a good forty meters above the rest of the forest.

"That was Cara's first great spell. She sat in the Seclusion for five days, fasting and working the spell to make it heal and grow. You might have heard a tale or two about the famous Morgaine le Faye who cast for days to create King Arthur's scabbard. The process isn't far from legend."

The pine branches seemed to wave to him in the wind, and Jasper turned back to Marsaid. "What was your great spell?"

Her smile vanished. "Cara was."

When she had said witches were born wise, Jasper hadn't quite expected the story that followed. As a very young child Marsaid had informed her mother, "Only one will follow me," and had been correct. It took Iudmea seven years to conceive again, and she commanded Marsaid to hold her tongue about what else she knew of the pregnancy.

"If my father had known that it was another girl before Cara was born, and the last Mother would ever bear, he might have disowned us. Holle chieftainship is traditionally patrilineal."

But Marsaid's first great spell had not been her prophecy, but the use of her gift on the day of Cara's birth. The younger girl had been born on the island, in the company of her fellow witches. Far too young to be allowed near, Marsaid had been kept apart from her laboring mother, waiting outside like a stone sentry.

"I didn't move for hours," Marsaid said. "Conrad knew something was about to happen. He could sense that I was gathering energy from the air, storing it up like a nesting bird. He distracted Imogene, the midwife, for me, and I went inside."

The only other woman in the room was Holly-Ann, who obeyed when Marsaid put a finger to her lips and crawled to the side of her mother's bed. "The baby is backward," she'd whispered to her suffering mother.

Exhausted and in pain, Iudmea had gripped her oldest daughter by the wrist and placed a hand on her shifting belly. "She didn't say anything. But I knew what she meant."

Iudmea had long been afraid of Marsaid's ability to move people. It reminded her too much of her sister Ada, who had used a similar talent to kill and bring about her own violent end. But as young Marsaid moved the only sister she would ever have inside their mother's womb, Iudmea's fear shriveled and died. Marsaid was good in a way that Ada had not been.

"Imogene caught me." Marsaid made a face. "She slapped me, and Holly-Ann, too."

"Why did she do that?" Jasper demanded, indignant on her behalf.

Marsaid smiled at his tone. "Because I disobeyed her." That sounded like a pretty pathetic form of justice to Jasper, but he didn't voice his thoughts.

"And Cara was born well, and Mother asked her who would follow her. And Cara said, ‘None.'"

"You cheated." Marsaid furrowed her brow. "I answered three of your questions in return for none." Jasper granted her three questions as compensation. She took a long time choosing her first, which made him think she was fixing to ask something disturbing. But her question was quite simple.

"When were you born?"

He told her the date, and she made a noise of warm appreciation. "Under the harvest moon," she commended him. "That explains the abundance in your life."

Jasper laughed. "I am lucky."

She glanced up at him for a second. "Abundances can be bad, too. Eric tells me you had a lot of enemies. He wants me to stay away from you." She made a scoffing sound in her throat. "Af if he has any shortage of enemies."

Jasper smirked. If Eric was the jealous type who begrudged Marsaid even having friends, he could appreciate the girl's dislike for the man. Unless he was just trying to protect her...

"Everyone has enemies," he agreed vaguely. "Mine have just changed over time."

Marsaid nodded, appreciative but unwilling to press for information.

Jasper tried to read her face, but failed. "Do witches see more than normal humans?"

"How do you mean?"

"Is your eyesight better?"

"You mean like a vampire's eyes are keen?"

"Yes."

"No. I'm mortal, aside from the marks of witchhood. Why?"

"I was wondering if you could see scars," he admitted.

Marsaid set aside the twigs in her hand and wiped the excess dirt from her fingers. "Where are you scarred?"

"Everywhere."

"Oh, don't exaggerate." She held up her palms to his face and shut her eyes, probing the very matter that comprised him. The gift of telekinesis made her more aware of every substance under her power, down to the molecular level, if she looked hard enough.

Marsaid dropped her hands, and Jasper swallowed. She opened her eyes and shook her head. "That's hardly everywhere."

"You cheated again." She sounded irritated this time. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she interrupted him with her next question. "What do you love most about yourself?"

It had taken him several minutes to answer, but Marsaid did not poke or prod. She waited patiently on his thoughts, and did not seem surprised by his answer: "Whatever it is that makes me right for Alice."

Marsaid didn't waste a question asking what it was about Alice that made her right for him. She simply trusted the universal forces that had placed the couple together.

Her next question made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, though he couldn't say why. "Why won't you let anyone protect you?"

The question came out of left field. His eyes turned guarded as he wondered where she could have gathered a clue to such a fundamental facet of his personality. Their conversation had been always light, and he'd only spoken of his past sporadically, vaguely...

"I'm used to relying on myself for that," he answered as evenly as he could.

Marsaid gave him a hard look that unsettled Jasper deeply, and then replied in a reasonable voice, "I'll take a fourth question, since you cheated twice."

Jasper nodded his assent, still unwilling to relinquish her gaze. A staring contest with a vampire was a fight already lost.

"What's it like to be the only person on earth who knows how truly loved you are?"

"What's your favorite place you've ever been?"

Marsaid looked up and smiled. "Right under this very tree," she replied.

He was surprised to learn that she had been born and lived every single day of her fourteen years within a five mile radius of the spot where she sat.

"Aren't you ever curious about the rest of the world?" Jasper demanded.

Marsaid shrugged. "Not particularly, as long as I have a calling here. I suppose that seems very strange to someone so well-traveled."

Jasper entertained her with stories from the outside world, from the bright lights of Tokyo and New York to the arid deserts and colorful Bedouin tent-homes. He told her some of his own travels, but limited the scope of that discussion to journeys he had made with Alice. He described how most of the world lived in nuclear family units, which Marsaid thought would be a lonely way to live compared to the network of extended family and friends she was accustomed to living with. She was puzzled by his praise of electricity, and even more confused by the concept of personal computers.

"But what does it do?"

"It does many things; share information, write documents, create media..."

"Why do you need a machine for that?"

"It makes things faster and easier."

Marsaid laughed out loud, showing her little white teeth. "Easier and faster for a vampire? My word..."

She was even more suspicious of cars, which sounded dangerous and unnecessary to her. She had seen snowmobiles, but only a handful of times, and viewed these conveyances as compensation for those who could not travel by magic.

He explained baseball to her and was surprised how the game captured her interest. He drew out a miniature diamond in the soil with his finger and diagrammed the rules and strategy for her. Marsaid watched this with such scrutiny that she forgot about what she had been doing, and her hands stilled on the wicker basket.

"Does your family celebrate Christmas?" she asked.

"We do."

"It's Christmas soon. Maybe everyone would like to play this on the day." She gestured to the diagram in the dirt. He reiterated that a proper game was played with at least nine players on each team, but they could do with more or less.

"Not everyone will want to play, I think," Marsaid said with a furrowed brow. "Siusan and Petras can't. And Luce and Aradottir could probably only play infield. They don't run well."

"It would be dangerous for you to play," Jasper told her tentatively. "If vampires are playing."

Her eyes lit up with a smile that had nothing to do with her mouth. "We can hold our own."

"And we may not be here by then," he reminded her.

"You will be."

The Russians were not as sure of this fact as Marsaid, and apprehended Jacob the second he'd finished eating that morning. They had more history to talk, and opened the same chamber they had used the day before. The only difference was that this time, strong drink was served; the homemade brew of the witches that Iudmea griped a bit about handing over to Yuriy.

The Russians had a particular history in mind, that day: their shared history. At first they did not speak, but questioned Jacob through Dasha about the oral histories of his people. The tale of Yaha Uta, Taha Aki, the third wife and their many sons was brought into the room slowly, and treated with surprising reverence by the Russians. They knew something sacred when they heard it.

Yuriy only interrupted twice, and then in a soft voice that was not meant to be heard over Jacob's. "His name was Fedor"; "Her name was Danika."

There was silence for the space of several heartbeats after Jacob finished his speech, and then the wiry vampire a Yuriy's right spoke up.

"The male who caused your family so much trouble was one of the founders of this troupe." He gestured to the wide circle. Jacob wondered if Dasha's translation of ‘family' was a loose one, or if these people knew better than most how the tribe worked, even throughout time.

"She joined us later, when we passed through Galicia."

Danika had been the impulsive sort, and had suffered Cecelia's displeasure several times after the troupe had come under her wing. She had been the only one opposed to their secluded existence on the mountain, even though her mate accepted the situation willingly.

"We are free to come and go as we please," Yuriy explained. "We just cannot be seen by anyone else, and can leave no trace for others to find. We have to be invisible."

"They went away a lot," Dasha interjected without waiting for one of the Russians to speak. "Well, she did, and he followed."

"There is a rule about hunting here," the man as Yuriy's right said, looking a bit irritated at Dasha for interrupting. "We don't kill humans unless they threaten us, or unless they want to die." He cited the ancient practice of the local Inuit, who would leave their families when it was convenient for them to die. "Dana has a knack for finding those," he added with a tilt of his eyebrow.

Jacob's eyes darkened. "Or so she says."

"No, no," Dasha shook her head. "Siusan would know if she was breaking the rules."

They returned to their story, explaining that after several centuries of openly feeding on human blood, the transition to ‘vegetarianism' had been difficult. "We all slipped. But those two went looking for trouble."

And trouble was located on Makah lands, near the caves, where they were unlikely to cross other vampires and were far enough away from Cecelia's watchful eye. With a continent between them and their benefactor, the couple had grown cocky.

"But then, Fedor was killed." The Russians smiled eerily at their friend's death. Yuriy bowed his head to Jacob in a gesture of thanks. "But she lived. And she returned here."

"At first she tried to rouse us," Yuriy took over the telling. "She made it seem like they had been attacked, and urged us to seek revenge. We are not a vengeful people." He chuckled through a toothy grin and gestured to the circle. "We are circus performers."

Danika had next gone to Cecelia for support, but Siusan had caught her lying.

"She sought permission to break the rules, then. She wanted vengeance on your wolf-people, whether or not anyone would come with her.

"'What have I told you about interfering with things bigger than yourself?' Cee said. Cecelia put it to a vote among us; should she kill Danika or cast her out?"

The first option had been the most appealing. Left alive and banished from the mountain, Danika had been a walking liability and a clue to the whereabouts of the former Guard. And her Russian family was not particularly fond of her, especially now what Fedor was dead and could not control her impulsive nature.

"What changed Cecelia's mind?" Jacob asked.

"The witches. The Gunn elder of the time told us that to let Danika go into the world unharmed was to bring about the great fortunes that would roll off her back. It has taken four hundred years, but the payoff is well worth it." Yuriy smiled at Jacob. "In the deaths of your ancestors, and of our brother and sister, you have gained a family stronger than most, and we have gained friends by it. The Gunns know much of treasure."

It was a day for last-chances. Not knowing whether or not they would see another morning on the mountain, each of the Cullens asked the questions they most wanted answered. Renesmee spent her day with Pecca, who showed her the twist and tug of a spindle in the privacy of her bedroom.

Pecca's relationships with the potential fathers of her child was still a mystery to Nessie. She had seen both Nade and Orek place hands on Pecca's head and on her neck; signs of parental and spousal claiming, and of love. She had not witnessed any jealousy between the two brothers, and could not discern which of the men Pecca preferred. But these were matters beyond her concern.

"Why didn't your father save your mother?" she asked directly.

Pecca had smiled a gentle smile as she wound her wool forward. The stuff came in great sacks, imported by one of the coven's contacts in the outer world.

"That was forbidden. My mother was an Associate of the Holles." Pecca explained that an Associate of a witching clan was a child born without magic who had not yet come of age. Part of the mountain culture, but expected to separate from it, these people were treated with a loving sort of detachment before being sent into the wide world on their eighteenth birthday.

"She was completely human. My father could touch her without being blasted by magic."

But the Holles had not been too happy to learn that a daughter of their blood, even a non-magical one, was with child by a vampire.

"She shamed them," Pecca explained. "And so they inflicted the greatest punishment: they sentenced her to death, and me to life. They promised her that she would not live to see her child grow, and that she would abandon me at the world's door just as she was supposed to be abandoned into the world beyond this place."

Renesmee swallowed, thinking of her first sight of her mother. It had been a fairly grisly scene, but she had known from the first that her mother loved her more than anything.

"Did you ever see her?"

"No. I was born on the island, to keep the vampires from interfering. The midwife placed a cloth over my face as soon as I was born, and I was taken from the room before my mother ever saw me. But I heard her." Pecca blinked, seeming to dispel the memory.

The vampires had been waiting in the water, just off the coast of the island. The midwife had tossed the sturdy bundle into the sea and shouted, "Let it pollute only your family, now."

"My existence," Pecca said very carefully, "is intended to bear my mother's shame. They let me live in order to spite her, that she could not live to see me. If you know the witches, you know how great a punishment that is."

"Do you ever hate them for it?"

"No. Witches are a jumpy bunch, and they look down on vampires, even if they won't admit it. And the stain of my birth has been no impediment to happiness in all my days."

From there Pecca lowered her voice and explained witch culture in all its detail. Witches had been aligned with the Romanian Empire since its early days, but usually for dubious reasons, including stability of wealth and political advantages. But they looked down on vampires. They saw these stone beings, unchangeable and eternal, prone to revenge and short on virtue, and pitied them. Children were a great blessing among witches, and they looked with pity on these vampire women who could bear none, and on the men who could not sire a child without killing or changing a mortal woman. They were proud of their ability to die; to join their families in the next world, and to make way for new life here. The eternal struggle of the vampire and ignorance of death's secrets was a misfortune in their eyes. And then, there was the vampire's greatest weakness: they could not bear to be touched by witches. The concentrated energy of the universe would overcome them, but would only empower the mere mortals who wielded it.

"But half-breeds like you and I," Pecca continued. "We are something too disdainful to acknowledge. We have the weaknesses of mortals, but the marks of immortality. To them we are tainted. But we are also blessed." She rested a hand on her swollen belly.

"I don't think I will be," Renesmee confessed.

"You're young, yet," Pecca assured her.

Renesmee shook her head. Even if it was possible for her to bear children, she was married to a man whose genes would undoubtedly reject the vampire in her blood. Conception, let alone birth, seemed highly unlikely.

"Never stop hoping. And it may take awhile." Pecca patted her stomach. "I've had lovers for the past four-hundred years, and this is just my first. We don't work like mortal women."

She placed a hand on Renesmee's neck. "Your time will come."

As for Carlisle, the question he most wanted answered had to be addressed to Cecelia. His time in the library with the other mountain-dwellers had given him to understand that the Guard were the oldest vampires left in existence. And as the oldest among them, Cecelia might have some insight into the origins of their species.

He found her alone on the dias late that evening, twisting sprigs of dried sweet grass from the garden into plugs for her pipe. She made no comment as he sat down next to her, and did not raise her head when he asked, "May I ask who changed you into a vampire?"

Cecelia knotted her ring of herbs and picked up another bunch. "He was a Pict. Never caught his name, though. And he's dead, so I can't ask."

"Do you know who made him?"

"No. I only ever spoke to him the once, and then I killed him."

The first blinding pain of the transformation was what woke her in the middle of the night. Through the haze of agony, concern for her children, as sharp a thought as any, compelled her to roll over and crawl forward. Stone fetters closed around her arms, holding her to the ground. Stay, my pet. The man who made her had not factored her size into the bite, and it took five days for her to complete the change. Time enough for her to grow certain that her infant child was dead from abandonment or starvation.

Cecelia's one conversation with the man had lasted a quarter of an hour. He explained that he'd had his eye on her for years, and had selected her for a mate, bringing her into the fold of immortality. None too pleased with this, she had demanded to know why he had not just waited until she was widowed again and instead kidnapped her in the dead of night. Disgusted with him, she had tried to leave, to go back to her family. It was then that he explained that she could never go back, never endanger her family like that, and she discovered her gift.

She crept back to her home that night, holding her breath, and took Siusan from the cradle she shared with Brighd's eldest boy. Comforted that her daughter had cared for the babe in her absence, Cecelia left, remaining only close enough to her home to keep watch over her family.

It was at this point in the story that Edward approached. He did not sit with his father and Cee, but leaned against the edge of the dias, patiently waiting. The stone ledge came up to his shoulders, perfect for resting against.

Cecelia put away her handful of freshly woven plugs, slipping them into a little woven bag. She set one aside and produced her pipe. Cecelia fit a wad of sweet herbs into the chamber and struck a match.

"Why do you bother?" Carlisle asked. "You can't possibly get any relief from it, like humans do from tobacco."

Cecelia shook out the match and tossed it aside on the stone. "The smell reminds me of my eighth husband. The one who was good to me." She smiled pointedly, banishing the sad topic. She raised her pipe to Carlisle in salute and said, "I've always wanted to tell you, you sure can raise a mob."

He swallowed. He should have known that the price of knowing her history was to have to talk about his. "That part of my life is over," he answered somberly.

"Mmh." Cecelia made a sarcastic sound of agreement around her pipe. "For a long time I thought your life in general was over."

Edward leaned forward, and Cecelia peered at him out of the corner of her eye. She smiled, and indulged him with the full memory he had but glimpsed in her head a moment before.

Cecelia had crawled up through a sewer grate three blocks from where the mob had accosted the rat-eater. She could still hear the shouting and smell the burning lantern fuel on the night wind. The little Close she had surfaced in was dark and silent for the night, and she stole across rooftops towards the place where the mob marched.

It wasn't a pretty sight. Four sewer grates lay open along the block, gaping in the wake of the crowd. Cecelia peered down each one and found a series of smoldering fires. They had poured alcohol into the sewer water and set it on fire. The vampires of this block had been trapped.

Cecelia hissed a curse in her native tongue, and then she smelled it. The blood was fresh, barely coagulated on the cobblestones. The largest puddle was just a few feet away near the gutter. An alarming trail of red ran from it, down the street and into the alley.

Cecelia stood up and started walking. She followed the trail into the alley and found the wounded man. He'd crawled surprisingly far for having lost so much blood.

She stood in the shadows, looking at Carlisle as he lay face-down on the pavement, and contemplated putting him out of his misery. She hadn't had a good meal in London yet... No, she decided. Best leave this one. He could die on his own and be left for the rats like he deserved, and if by some miracle he survived, perhaps the encounter with the rat-eater would put the fear of God into him and produce a healthy respect for creatures of the night.

Cecelia cut the memory off there.

"If I'd known he'd bit you, and not just hurt you, I might have chosen differently."

"What were you doing in a London sewer?" Edward interjected.

"Trying to get the Gunns to follow me out of London," Cecelia answered simply. "They went there to hide. It's easier to blend into the crowd in a large city. We got most of them out. A few stubborn ones stayed, but didn't last long. The Volturi burned them out three years later. Half the fucking city caught alight. The place was prime feeding ground for vampires while that fire raged. Every other person and his uncle disappeared, either up in smoke or sucked dry. Jane never was one for finesse. At least Illya aimed for the bull's eye when hunting witches."

Carlisle and Edward shared a look, but neither of them pressed her.

"I wanted to ask you something," Edward began tentatively.

"Scholars always do," she muttered lightly.

"I was talking to Dana last night."

"My, you're brave."

"She said something..." He paused, searching for a polite way to phrase it.

"Don't let her disturb you, boy. Dana has always been dark as the ocean is deep."

"It's not that..."

Bella slowly stepped up to the dias, taking her natural place at her husband's side. She had to go up on her toes to see over the edge of the platform, but otherwise kept silent. Cecelia took note of the concern on the younger woman's face, and turned back to Edward.

"Are you going to make me guess?"

"She told me about half-breeds, like our daughter," he naturally included Bella. "I don't doubt what she said was true," he swallowed, "but...she said the Volturi were involved."

"Yes. The half-breeds thought they were safe from Vladimir and Stefan. The Volturi pledged them protection, until they heard that the Guard had been sent to deal with things. Bloody cowards."

Edward shook his head, feeling the weight of the action's consequences even as he did so. "I've seen inside their heads. When they saw Nessie...when they talked about her and the other existing half-breeds, they did so as though they'd never seen one before. I saw it in their minds." He swallowed. "I think you're lying."

Cecelia stared at him for the longest second of his very long life. "You are either very stupid, or you have a death wish."

The main cavern was settling down for the evening, the witches having retired an hour earlier. But every whisper of hushed conversation silenced the moment Cecelia moved. She backhanded Edward across the face like an insolent child, and then stood up and stepped off the dias. Before he could right himself she'd grabbed him by the back of the neck, and marched him ahead of her through the cavern like an unruly ward.

Bella stepped smartly to follow. Esme was about to cry out in protest when Siobhan clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head. Now was not the time to interfere.

Cecelia forced him ahead of her through the corridor off the main cavern, followed at a safe distance by almost every other waking creature out of morbid curiosity. The Cullens looked to Alice for reassurance, and from her trance she mouthed, "It's okay."

Cecelia slammed her fist against the door of the witches' dormitory, and it flew forward on its hinges. The bang woke everyone in the room with a start, and Cecelia barked, "Marsaid?"

The young girl was on her feet in an instant, too terrified to disobey. None of the other witches lifted a finger to stop Marsaid from being called away. Cara made a move to follow her sister, but Iudmea grabbed her back.

Barefoot and clothed in only a nightgown, Marsaid shivered down the corridor ahead of Cee. She did not look at Edward, and her cool face belied nothing. It was only the rapid pace of her breath that signaled her fear.

When they reached the spiral staircase, instead of going down as they always had, Cecelia marched them up two levels. The landing was long and narrow, and Cecelia ordered Marsaid in a hard voice to unlock the door, even as the girl fiddled for the key ring around her neck. What lay beyond the door was a cavern of doors, each the size of a small cupboard and fashioned of stone or steel. In the corner, a little statue of the deity painted on Dana's wall stood watch over the still and dusty room.

It was a crypt. Each locked door had a name inscribed upon it, some in languages so old the script was indecipherable. This is what Marsaid had meant when she said that the witches only came to the mainland when one of their own died. The mountain itself was a graveyard.

"Don't be afraid, and don't do anything stupid," Alice directed Edward through her thoughts. He would have rolled his eyes were it not for the fact that he was very afraid of the vampire who had him by the throat.

Cecelia stopped by a particularly small door and ordered Marsaid, "Open it."

With cold hands, Marsaid slipped a thin key into the lock on the door. Her breath fogged the air and stuck to the metal as a mist. The tumblers clicked, and Cecelia opened the door to spare the girl the uncomfortable sensation of touching cold steel.

Behind the door was a casket, two feet long and fashioned out of copper. It had gone green with age and the seams puckered in the cold. Cecelia let go of Edward to remove the casket from its niche in the rock and set it on the floor.

Marsaid leaned against the wall and sank to the floor, curling into a ball to conserve heat. She couldn't leave until Cee dismissed her, and her nightgown was no match for the chill.

Cecelia lifted the lid and set it aside. Inside the plain, unlined coffin, the gleaming white bones of a toddler lay at rest. He could see in Cecelia's mind the image of the living child, whose face had been shaped over the perfectly formed skull.

"When the Volturi aligned with the half-breeds, they took a half-breed child into their home as a gesture of goodwill. The boy was fed well there, as you probably know, and treated like a little prince." Cecelia ran a finger from the crown of the skull bone to the manacle of the jaw. "Didyme was fond of him." Cecelia picked up the child's third finger joint and slipped from it a lapis ring. The ornament was clotted with tarnish and dust, but it unmistakably matched the ring Marcus wore. The child had been buried with Didyme's wedding band.

"The Volturi heard that we were coming. They received word of what we'd done to this boy's family." She gestured to the bones before her. "They couldn't very well bring the Romanian Guard down on Volterra, all for a young half-breed. And his family was dead. No one would seek vengeance for him." Cecelia placed the lapis ring back on the appropriate finger bone.

"Didyme was grieved, you might say. This boy was her child, in many ways. She prepared his body with all due ceremony, according to her Etruscan heritage, and met us personally at the gate to present his bones.

"It was then that she decided to go her own way. Marcus would have followed her, had Aro and Caius not got wind of their plan. She died for the love of this child."

The room was still then, apart from Marsaid's harsh breathing. Her lips had gone blue over the course of the speech, and her fingers were purple. It was Liam who broke the frieze, stepping quietly into the room to lend the mortal his cloak.

"Do not call me a liar," Cecelia told Edward levelly. "You trust the men who would have destroyed your daughter, when their decisions were the ones that cost countless people their lives."

She refrained from pointing out that she had been the one to personally end most of those lives.

"You can be lied to. You are vulnerable. Do not trust the men who have lied through their teeth for three thousand years to keep power over our world. They're good at it; better than you can imagine."

"You're older than they are," Edward argued meekly. "And you can lie, too."

"I have never held absolute power, nor do I wish to. I have nothing to lose except my children. I have no reason to lie in this matter. Consider who does."

“They weren’t lying in this matter. No one is that good.”

“In order to lie to you now, I would have to manufacture memories of destruction and violence. All the Volturi had to do was keep such memories from you. Which is easier to discern: a true memory, or a product of the imagination?”

Edward grimaced as he reluctantly admitted, “Anything imagined is less clear.”

“They knew exactly what your daughter was. They’d seen it before. Did they try to collect her?”

“No,” Edward continued to protest. “They wanted to kill Nessie because they did not know what she would become. But if they did, just like they knew what the Immortal Children were capable of, why outlaw one but not the other?”

“Because the Volturi liked the Half-Breeds. Twas the Romanians that despised them, but Aro in particular liked the hybrid species.”

“He wanted to kill Nessie.”

“But…” Heads swiveled in Bella’s direction. “He didn’t. Not really. He wanted to kill or collect us—our family and the people standing with us. Nessie was just the excuse.”

“Collateral damage,” Cee murmured.

“Half-Breeds are relatively easy to create,” Dana pointed out. “All you need is a mortal female, willing or not, and the ability not to kill her before siring a child on her. What’s the loss of one such child in exchange for the use of your family’s gifts?”

No one answered her, but a perceptible chill ran through the assembled when she freely admitted, "It goes against the grain to call Aro intelligent, but I would have done the same. I'd have killed the girl to get to Bella and Alice."

"He's done worse," Orek murmured.

"Who needs a drink?" Yuriy shouted, forcibly breaking the tension. He led a parade down the stairwell, comprised of every person who knew when the show was over. The Cullens hung back, waiting for Cee to dismiss Edward. She shooed him out with a nod of her head as she closed the child's coffin. The family left the crypt quickly, but Edward couldn't resist one glance back at Cecelia. Her tale was a convoluted one, to be sure. Question was, was she the villain or the hero?