“Mother,” she cut in. “Thorn—Lily?—looks exactly like me. She has to be my twin, Lily, who’s supposed to be dead but clearly isn’t. She’s also an oneiromancer, or she would be if she hadn’t been isolated in this cottage in the woods for her entire life and—”
Shoshan forgot herself in her extremity and clapped a hand over Rose’s mouth, grabbing her by the back of her head to hold it there and yanking her forward. Rose, aware of her mother’s sudden emotional storm, forced herself to stay still under the unwelcome touch. “You mustn’t speak such lies,” Shoshan hissed, their foreheads nearly touching. “It isn’t true. It can’t be true. I saw her body! I held my dead infant while you wailed in your cradle like your heart would break. You can’t tell me that what I experienced was a lie. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. If you want me to believe it wasn’t real, that Lily is alive and I’ve missed twenty years with her… I can’t bear it!”
Rose waited until her mother released her, sitting back gratefully, if shaken, once Shoshan dropped her hands. “I’m not saying this to torment you, Mum. I’m telling you I met Thorn and she can’t be anyone but my twin. If there’s another explanation, I’d love to hear it.”
“I don’t know who you met. A girl who looks like you? And an untrained mage?” Shoshan laughed, but it was hollow. “Such a person cannot exist. Are you certain it wasn’t a figment of the Dream?” Shoshan turned into sober, concerned mother in a flash. She brushed the back of her hand against Rose’s forehead, as if checking for fever. “It’s dangerous, you know—I’m sure your teachers must have said—when you attempt to physically walk the Dream. Many can’t handle it. You dreamed about your latesister, that’s it. You were always asking about her. Asking asking asking about someone you shouldn’t even know about much less remember, until I… just…” Shoshan clenched her hands into fists. “I’m going to speak to Madame Hendricks. I’m concerned that you’re having delusions.”
“Really?” Rose bit out. “You’re going to tell the academy that I think I met my identical twin hidden away in a cottage and that I’m operating under the delusion that she was falsely believed dead but instead she and I were separated at birth and she was raised free of the blood geas that binds me and every other magic-worker, but that she’s an equally powerful oneiromancer, dangerously untrained?”
With every word, her mother paled, shrinking into a vestige of her former self. “Don’t say these things,” she insisted, but she lacked all resolve.
“They’ve been said,” Rose replied flatly. “Thorn exists.” She thought of Thorn timidly confiding that she sometimes thought she was dead. She had sympathy for her mother’s grief and how difficult this must be, but she also thought of Thorn—the sadder, attenuated, brutalized version of herself, kept ignorant of her magical abilities, living in that cottage, basically working as a servant for the guardian sorceress who kept her trapped there—and that image sat in her stomach as if she’d swallowed something fully inedible. “I know this is hard,” she added, feeling as if she only battered everyone in her life lately, “but you can’t pretend Thorn away. She has to be Lily.”
“If you think she’s Lily, why are you calling her Thorn?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know, but I suspect her guardian, a person named Jada, called her that.”
It seemed impossible for her fair mother to whiten any further, but she did. Then an angry flush flooded in beneath. “Jada?” She said the name with harsh familiarity.
“Yes. Jada. A sorceress who has raised Thorn and kept herimprisoned in that cottage, teaching her only certain things and keeping her ignorant of everything else. Did you know she makes Thorn sleep in the root cellar as a punishment? That she puts Thorn into the Sleep of Ages and leaves for weeks at a time? Only Thorn doesn’t fully sleep, because she’s a native oneiromancer, so her magic resists it and instead she simply lies there, half aware and immobilized and—”
Shoshan clapped a hand over her mouth. A sick knowledge, a creeping fear lurked in the back of her eyes.
“What do you know? You recognized Jada’s name. Don’t pretend you didn’t. Who is she?”
“I—” Her mother broke off, shoulders bunching around her ears as the door to the poppy salon burst inward. Rose’s father stood in the doorway, bristling with the magic that had busted the lock and wards before they were even aware of his approach.
“Rose,” he ground out, black brows beetling over his dark eyes. Rose and Thorn got all of their coloring from him. “What are you doing here? I insist on an explanation immediately.”
He knew about Thorn. Rose had no doubt of it. Her mother didn’t, but he did. The knowledge came to her, irrefutable, and she felt as if the ground beneath her had turned to fine sand, sifting away, undermining the foundations of her world. To cover it, she sat back in her chair, deliberately indolent.
“Hallo, Daddy,” she drawled. “Care to join us for tea? I suggest you close and lock the door, unless you don’t mind if anyone overhears our conversation. I’m to the point where I don’t care, myself.” She held his gaze defiantly, holding her ground as she hadn’t been able to before this moment.
He lurked in the doorway a moment longer, broad shoulders nearly filling it, angry magic pouring into the interstices. Then, with a grunt, Clotaire stepped into the room and nearly slammed the door closed, magically resealing it as the physical lock was done for. “What’s all this then?” he demanded. “Rose, if the academy discovers that you—”
“Can we skip over this part?” Rose inquired sweetly. “I have questions and not much time.”
“I can’t imagine what questions you have that would justify—”
“Jada.” Rose let that hang there, watching her father absorb that name like a blow. “I’d love to knowall aboutJada,” she continued into the fraught silence, “and why she’s been allowed to terrorize and hide away my identical twin sister, who you let all of us believe was dead.”
“What?” he demanded, but he was feigning the shock. Rose could see it in him, see him playing for time while he thought up excuses. More lies.
“I met Thorn,” Rose told him implacably. “I know she’s alive.”
He met her gaze for one long defiant moment, then sagged. “I didn’t want you to find out this way. Either of you. I only wanted to…” He heaved a sigh and leaned a hand on the table, as if briefly dizzy.
“No more lies,” Rose said. “If I were to dig up Lily’s coffin, would I find it empty?”
Her father gazed back at her. “I wouldn’t advise doing that.”
“Then answer my question.”
Clearly debating with himself, he finally shook his head in resignation. “You would find the bones of an infant. A child who died and shouldn’t be disinterred so rudely.”
“Some other child?” she pressed. “Not Lily.”
“Not Lily,” he agreed wearily, wiping a hand over his brow. “Because Lily never died,” he said, lifting his gaze to Rose. “You did.”
