With a resigned shrug, Rose sat, parceling out the remaining cookies evenly between their plates, saving them for later, then taking a bite of the honeyed bread. She closed her eyes indelight. It might be the best bread she’d ever had. “This is delicious. You do all your own baking?”
“There’s not anyone else to do it,” Thorn pointed out with a smile, a bit more of a wry tone in there than Rose would expect of the earnest young woman.
“This Jada never helps? You do all the cooking, gardening, housework.”
“Yes, since I was old enough to take over the chores. Jada spent enough of her time and life energy on taking care of me when I was little. It was the least I could do to repay her, taking over those tasks.”
The recitation smacked of something this Jada must have told Thorn over and over. “I think,” Rose said carefully, trying not to upset the kitten further, “that you have been told many things that aren’t true.”
Far from dissolving again, Thorn instead hardened. “I think so, too.”
Rose poured tea for them from the steeping pot. Sipping the tea helped. So did eating one of the exquisitely good cookies. She raised her brows at Thorn, who hadn’t moved. “I think it’s time you sat, sister, dear. This is going to be a long conversation.”
18
Sister.Somehow, lagging behind Rose’s rapid-fire deductions and observations, Thorn hadn’t quite grasped the implications of all this. She had a sister. A twin. All these years of feeling so alone, wishing for a friend, the dark-haired little girl who’d appeared during her time in the Dream, it hadn’t occurred to her that her wish might come true.
Of course, that her wish had been granted with this gorgeous, intimidating, sharp-tongued sorceress who casually dismissed the threat of Jada and pronounced herself useless in the kitchen without a hint of shame—indeed, who cheerfully accepted being called wicked—really just figured. Not to mention that Sebastien belonged to her, the cruelest blow of all.
“Are you sure I’m your dead sister?” she repeated, knowing she probably sounded like an idiot.Dead.It would explain so much.
“You’renotdead,” Rose replied in that dry tone Thorn was beginning to recognize. “And yes, you have to be my naturally conceived twin, unless we were magically duplicated at some point.”
“Is that something that happens?” she asked cautiously.
Rose barked out a laugh, then propped her elbows on the table and dropped her head in her hands. “Stars light my way,” she said into them, then lifted her head and sighed. “Would you please sit? Drink some tea and eat some cookies. You’re making me nervous with your prowling about the kitchen like a cat locked behind closed doors.”
“Let me just put the bread in the oven.” Shewasnervous, Thorn realized, but she was also running out of plausible tasks. Sliding the nicely puffed bread into the oven, she glanced aboutto see that all was in order, dusted her hands on a towel, and finally slid into the chair opposite Rose. Her sister. Her twin.
“So, you are an oneiromancer?” she asked timidly.
Rose raised her elegant brows. Thorn wondered if she could get hers to look that perfect and, if so, how to do it. “I can’t decide if I’m boggled or impressed that that’s your first question. Yes, I am a trained oneiromancer. One of the best there is, except for Oneira herself, and I’m young yet. Oneira is a famous sorceress,” she added.
Rose had called herself the best with the arrogance of complete confidence. Something else to envy. “I know who Oneira is,” Thorn said, a bit defensively. She might be ignorant of a great deal, but not about that.
“Do you now?” Rose eyed her. “Color me surprised.”
“I saw Oneira once,” Thorn added with pride.
Rose’s perfect brows shot straight up. “How is that possible?”
“Well, she might have been a ghost.”
“Why do you think that?”
Surprised that Rose hadn’t simply dismissed her as stupid or a liar, Thorn told her the story of that night. Rose was particularly interested in Jada’s reaction—and seemed impressed by Thorn’s somewhat successful attempt to put Jada into a deep sleep.
“Oneira cast a sleep enchantment,” she explained. “That’s within an oneiromancer’s skill set, if they’re powerful enough. You made Jada sleepy with your homemade potion—and well done, you—but Oneira is the one who made her sleep so hard, so her visit and theft would be undetected. She can’t have been a ghost, of course.”
“Why not?” Thorn ventured, fully expecting to be slapped down for asking a stupid question.
But Rose gave her a thoughtful look. “I can understand why you thought so, with her being insubstantial, but first of all, there’s no evidence that ghosts exist. People are always trying to draw correlations between the Dream and the afterlife, butno living person has ever made contact with the dead. If an afterlife exists, the wall between that realm and ours—and the Dream—is impenetrable.But, interestingly, many sightings of what are thought to be ghosts are very likely people caught inside the Dream and breaking through to the waking world. Oneira disappeared, back in the autumn, and some believe she went into the Dream, so it would make a kind of sense that she visited here from there.” Rose tapped her lower lip in contemplation.
“Why would she?”
Rose’s abstracted gaze came back to her. “A good question. She wanted books, but why? She can clearly still work her sorcery. Which makes me think, why didn’t the sleep enchantment work on you, though?”
Thorn was still caught up in the previous riddle, but answered. “She didn’t seem to see me. That is, she asked if anyone was there, but I stayed very still and she looked right through where I was. I think I’m warded so no one can see me.”
