“She hasn’t been back for a couple of days,” Thorn answered. “She said she’d explain more later.” All true.
“I’m sure that wasn’t an accident.” Her father topped off the tea in her mug, though she’d barely drunk any. “Rose is understandably upset, but she’ll get over it. That’s why I’m here. To explain my plan so you can hear it from the source, without bias. I want you to understand the pivotal role you will play in what is to come.”
Not because he wanted to meet his other daughter. “You could have come before this.”
“I couldn’t.” He reached across the little table to put his hand over hers, squeezing lightly. Her father, holding her hand, givingher that proud smile—it touched something in her that was still young and small and vulnerable. “I wanted to, Thorn. I hope you know that. I thought about you every day, but I didn’t dare come see you. I couldn’t afford to indulge myself and keep you safe at the same time.”
Another thing that sounded like Jada could have said it. How many injustices had Jada justified under the excuse of keeping her safe?
“I understand my name is actually ‘Lily,’” she said.
“Rose apparently had time to tell you that much,” he commented sourly, and Thorn didn’t correct him. “To all the world, Lily died at birth. You don’t need that name, as you will take Rose’s name and become her. Isn’t that exciting?”
He was speaking to her like she was a child. Or mentally inadequate. And concealing his real plan to make her a prisoner again. He was offering her the world on a platter, only to snatch it away.
“I would love to tell you everything,” her father continued, apparently not needing an answer, then made a show of hesitating. “But can I trust you?”
She nearly laughed in his face. “Do you have a choice at this point?”
He studied her a long moment, then shook his head. “I expected someone raised as you have been to be softer, more obedient.”
She had been exactly that, for too long. “Not because Jada didn’t try to crush my spirit.”
“Jada is no tenderhearted figure, it’s true,” he agreed on a sigh. “But she was the right choice at the time.”
She really didn’t want to talk about Jada, especially when she had other burning questions. “How did you decide which of us to keep? Me or Rose.”
He looked a little startled by the subject change. “Rose asked the same question.”
“And you had a reason for why I was the one you abandoned?”
“I didn’tabandonyou.” He swept a hand at the cottage and garden. “Demonstrably, I provided for you. You never wanted for anything.”
That was debatable, but she let it go. “The question stands.”
“Rose was born first,” he answered with the air of a man much aggrieved by tedium—and the convincing air of someone not telling the full truth. “She’d already suckled at her mother’s breast when you put in a surprise appearance. If anyone made a choice, it was you, in letting your sister emerge first.” He chuckled at his poor attempt at a joke.
Nothing about that inclined her to laugh. Absurd that a twist of physiology had served her with such a different fate. But she would take charge of that now. “But that chance destiny means I get to take Rose’s place now?”
“Exactly. Let me explain.”
Thorn listened closely as her father detailed his convoluted plan. He could have plucked the visions from her own fantasies. Thorn taking Rose’s place at King Soren’s court, implying she could marry Prince Sebastien. She would be tutored intensively in oneiromancy, learn court etiquette, be outfitted with gowns and jewels, have servants to wait on her. She would be a true princess, receiving her just dream come true, living happily forever after.
Thorn held her father’s hand and smiled at him like he held the key to her happiness, like she didn’t know he was lying through his teeth. Curious, and because it seemed in character, she asked what would happen to Rose.
Rose, he said, had not been enthusiastic at all. Crushingly so, after all he’d done for her.
“I’m giving her an unprecedented opportunity for freedom and power,” he confided sadly. “All her life, I’ve given her everything a girl could want, and she acts like I’ve done something wrong and terrible. I just—”
“Thorn!” The outraged scream of Jada’s voice shocked Thorn and she reflexively hunched, jerking her hand from her father’s as if guilty of some transgression, whirling and standing to face her guardian.
Sweeping in from the garden, Jada stormed through the kitchen door, face contorted and purple-red as beets. “The wards—” she began, abruptly cutting herself off as she spotted Thorn’s father, also rising from his chair. “Clotaire,” she gasped. “How—Why…” She snapped her gaze back to Thorn, ugly accusation in it.
“Jada,” Clotaire said, a world of disapproval in his voice, threat in his posture. “Imagine my surprise when I came to fetch my daughter and you, her guardian. Were. Not. Here.”
“I had to retrieve supplies,” she protested. “We can’t live here on only what the garden produces.”
“For weeks or months at a time?” he asked with menacing calm.
