“How could you…” Shoshan whispered in horror, face white as bone. “You had her killed, didn’t you.” Rose’s mother had stopped asking questions, instead framing everything as a statement of agonizing fact.
Clotaire’s jaw ticced slightly before he mastered it. “I sacrificed raising one of my daughters to this cause, this incredibly, vitally important attempt to save countless magic-workers now and for generations to come. I did what I had to do to preserve that secrecy. Considering the other lengths I went to, do you really think I’d hesitate to silence a midwife, a mundane human, one near the end of her useful life anyway?”
Shoshan’s face had gelled, or frozen, into a featureless plain, like the far north. Rose could almost hear the howl of the snow-laden winds. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Perhaps not, Shoshan,” he bit out. “But then, you never did, did you? You never wanted to. You’ve been happy enough to live this life, if you want to call it that, this existence of indentured servitude to anyone who can afford the price to attach their own leash to the collars permanently locked around our necks. Just so long as you had your gowns and jewels and parties, you were willing to sell your soul to the highest bidder.”
“That’s unfair, Clotaire, and you know it,” Shoshan fired back in a hush of quiet rage. Rose felt like a spectator in this private war, an icily formal crescendo of a battle in the long conflict of her parents’ marriage. “I—we—had no choice in giving Rose over to the blood geas. And I’ve done my best to equip her to make good choices, the best possible choices in whatever contract she chooses to accept.”
Shoshan slid Rose a glance, not quite questioning, but moreurgent, a plea in her gaze for Rose not to prove her wrong. She didn’t have to respond or answer because her father spoke immediately.
“Therewasa choice, Shoshan,” he said, chopping a hand in the air. “That’s my entire point here. What happened that portentous midnight was a miracle, a singular opportunity, and I seized it.”
“You could have talked to me, included me on a decision about my own child.”
“Ourchild,” he insisted. “And could you have given her up? No,” he answered decisively. “We had no way to explain how you bore twins and we ended up with one corpse and two living infants.” He bent his stern expression on Rose. “You wanted to know what you’d find in Lily’s coffin? Don’t look, for it would be your own mortal infant form, discarded for the wondrous body you wear now. You havetranscended, Rose. You are a miracle.”
Rose had no words, her mind reeling. Fortunately her mother had plenty to say.
“You are trying to dress up a fundamental crime as a good deed, Clotaire,” Shoshan bit out. “If you thought you were doing the right thing, if you believed that I’d agree, you would have consulted me.”
“You and I have never seen exactly eye to eye, but we’ve both committed to this marriage, to this life together. If nothing else, I know you, Shoshan. You would never have agreed to give up that baby. Not for any reason.”
“Becausenoreason is good enough to abandon your own child,” Shoshan said in a trembling voice.
“Exactly,” Clotaire replied, seeming to think Shoshan had somehow agreed with him and Rose could only marvel at what a fool her father was, claiming he knew his wife when he clearly had no idea of the danger he was in. “Lily has unprecedented power and the freedom to go with it,” he continued, oblivious. “An opportunity that no magic-worker in recent history, perhaps ever, has enjoyed.”
“Thorn,” Shoshan corrected, glancing at Rose again, this time with regret. “Jada calls her Thorn. If you’d been caring for your daughter instead of abandoning her, you would know that.”
“Jada renamed her because Lily died,” Clotaire corrected, “so far as all the world knew. Her name is immortalized on her gravestone, after all. I suggested the name ‘Thorn,’ but you’re right—I didn’t know. All these years I thought of her as Lily.”
“Why ‘Thorn’?” Shoshan asked, gaze glassy.
“It seemed fitting,” he answered stiffly. “Part of you. I wanted her to have a piece of her mother. You named Lily, for whatever obscure reason. Rose, for the birthmark.” His gaze flicked to her as he said her name and away. “I thought Thorn seemed apt.”
“Did you intend it to be cruel?” Rose asked, surprising both her parents, apparently, that she presumed to have a voice in the conversation. “Did you deliberately choose the sharp part of a rose, the part that must be clipped away?”
“It seemed appropriate,” he answered with a nod. “And given her destiny to be a thorn in the side of the established system that oppresses us all, a poetic choice.”
“I see,” Rose said pleasantly, continuing with the conversation, since her mother seemed to be on the verge of cracking and needed a moment. “And how is that to happen, exactly?”
Clotaire frowned at Rose, palpably angry with her as he’d never been in all her life. That sense of the ground sliding away beneath her feet returned, intensified. “I don’t owe you explanations, Daughter, so take care with your tone.” The coldness of his words struck her like a slap in the face. “You happened to stumble upon this knowledge too soon—and we shall discuss, in detail, exactly what you know and how you accidentally found out about Lily—Thorn, that is—despite extreme measures to safeguard her. But I did this for you, too. I’ve been nothing but generous to you and I’m honestly shocked by your lack of gratitude. After all I’ve done for you. All your life I’ve protected you. And this is how you come to me? Wearing the jewelsIgave youand spouting accusations and suspicion. I’m still your father, who loves you and who you’ve loved well. Do you just throw that away at the first doubt, discard even basic loyalty? I’m deeply hurt that you have so little faith in me. You have no concept of what I’ve sacrificed, nor why I made the decisions I did.”
Rose sucked back the apologies and protests that rose to her lips. She was here for answers. Sorting her relationship with her father, which it seemed had never been what she thought it was, along with her self and her entire life, could come later. When she could weep over her breaking heart and existential angst in private.
“You’re right,” she said, holding up her palms. “Idon’tunderstand, but I want to. For example, I get that you saw an opportunity when Thorn and I were born, that one of us could be kept free of the blood geas, but why not teach her to be an oneiromancer in that case? Why impose wards on her to prevent her from dreaming instead of teaching her to control her dreams?”
Shoshan sucked in a shocked breath of dismay and Rose set a hand on her mother’s knee under the table, willing her to hold her tongue, and her temper, just a little longer.
Clotaire hmphed with impatience, dark eyes glittering. “So much for that expensive education. Think it through. There are three very good reasons.” He pointed at her again, then held up the finger, ticking off the first point. “Use of sorcery is noticeable,especiallyoneiromancy, as sorcerers with power in that niche ability are exceedingly rare. You were a known quantity—so far as they understood—contained by knowledgeable faculty, so any ripple effects from your learning efforts were easily tracked to you. Had Thorn dabbled, she might have been discovered.
“Second of all—” He snorted, folding both fingers into his hand and tapping the meat of his fist on the table. “—think of what she accomplished as an untrained infant. A power like hers must be contained and controlled. Who was going to teach her?” he demanded.
Frustration built up over the many intervening years rolled offof him in waves. “It’s not as if the teachers you have been privileged to enjoy are thick on the ground, nor are they inexpensive to contract, even if I could risk letting them in on the secret. Even if any of themcouldteach her. Believe me, I considered all sorts of options for teaching her. Jada certainly wasn’t up to the job. All she would do is corrupt Thorn’s learning, teach her badly in ways that might become habitual and couldn’t be corrected later. Even more likely, Jada would have lost control of Thorn entirely and unleashed her on an unwitting world. The most she could do was contain Thorn’s dreaming and ward her from discovery.”
“WhyJada?” Shoshan jumped in, her voice strained, expression harsh. “Of all people you could choose, you picked that—”
“I hardlychoseher, Shosh,” Clotaire sneered. “Do you somehow imagine I carefully selected Jada from a panel of qualified applicants following extensive interviews? I had a short window of opportunity. When Thorn pulled Rose out of the Dream, I stood in that room, staggered by the implications of both of our babies. In a flash I saw the key to unlock the chains that have bound us and our kind for centuries. If I acted swiftly, without hesitation, no one else would ever know that both of our daughters survived. That tiny, infinitely powerful infant could be raised without the blood geas, but still under our control. Same with Rose. I had no idea what an oneiromancer created from the Dream itself might be capable of, but I felt sure she—you, Rose—could be greater than Oneira, who is only human, just as I always told you.”
