Chapter 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’re not dead,” 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.” She was nervous, Thorn realized, but she was also running out of plausible tasks.
Sliding the nicely puffed bread into the oven, she glanced about to 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, but no 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.”
“That’s very odd because a sorceress of Oneira’s power should be able to see through most magic. This Jada, is she good at wards?”
“Very,” Thorn answered fervently.
“Sebastien saw you. I see you,” Rose pointed out with clear logic. She looked at Thorn in a penetrating way that reminded Thorn of Jada when she worked some sorcery. “There are no wards on you now, but it’s also really difficult to ward a living being. They move around too much.”
“Maybe they weren’t working so well anymore.” Thorn considered. “She used to just lock me in and keep me from leaving the cottage garden, but then she started putting me to sleep while she was gone.”
Rose set down the cookie she’d been nibbling, very slowly. “Put you to sleep? Locked you in?” Flags of red colored her high cheekbones, dark eyes glittering with anger, seeming to reflect the swirling metallic colors in the roses she wore.
Thorn wasn’t quite sure how to respond. She didn’t think Rose was angry at her again.
It seemed that lately all she did was upset people.
“Jada had to make excursions, you see, to the city, to acquire more supplies. And she needed me to stay inside the briar fence while she was gone, for my own safety, but I hated it, so I tried to slip her wards and go through the gate.”
Rose had set her cookie down. “You can’t go past the fence?”
“No.” Thorn waved a hand at it. “Well, I found that I could. I disobeyed. I stole books on warding from the library—she wouldn’t teach me that kind of sorcery, she said I had no talent for it—but I wanted to try.
” Suddenly it seemed very important to convince Rose that Thorn hadn’t meant to be a bad person.
She hadn’t intended any of those terrible things at all.
“But Jada was right. I should never have tried to leave the garden.”
“That’s when you met Sebastien?” Rose asked evenly.
Thorn shook her head. “No, that was later. This was, oh, years ago. But Jada was right. I muffed up breaking her wards and she returned immediately. Then she made me sleep any time she was gone. The whole time.” Rose was frowning, so Thorn added, “Enchanted sleep. Like you said Oneira did to Jada. Only for a long time. Sometimes weeks, I think. I was supposed to just sleep, I think, but I remained partly awake. I just couldn’t move.
Jada said I shouldn’t be aware, but I was and I don’t know why.
Anyway, I wouldn’t wake up until Jada returned and lifted the enchantment. ”
“That … that is inhumane,” Rose breathed, looking and sounding horrified, which made Thorn feel a bit better.
“I hated it,” she said, feeling on the verge of tears again, but so very tired of weeping. “And then Moriah came to visit and she told me—”
Rose held up a hand in a sharp gesture. “Moriah. You mentioned her before. The black cat Moriah, the antimage, the witch’s familiar, repository of all the spells in the world?”
“I don’t know what most of that means,” Thorn replied quietly, feeling her ignorance like a debilitating weakness in the face of Rose’s dazzling strength.
“She just called herself Moriah. But she did call herself the antimage and she’s the one who got rid of everything I dreamed into being at the inn. ”
“Maybe it’s time you tell me that story. Starting with how you met Sebastien.”
Thorn felt herself cringe. She stared at her tea, unable to meet Rose’s lovely, accusing eyes. “He, ah, didn’t tell you?”
“He was too distraught,” Rose replied, voice cool and unforgiving. “And he was wounded, as I’m sure you know.” Thorn barely nodded before Rose relentlessly continued, that flinty anger returning. “After I treated his injury, he fell asleep in my arms, crying for his lost and beloved hound, Nina.”
“I didn’t know how to bring her back,” Thorn said, miserable. “Maybe you can?”
Rose shook her head. “I can try, but she belongs to the Dream now. This is why the untutored should never play at being oneiromancer.”
Thorn swallowed down her tears. “I realize I’m a danger to the world, and that’s why I’ve been locked away here.” Though she did wonder why Rose wasn’t an amateur, why she’d been taught. “That’s why I promised Moriah I would come back here and stay. And I have.”
Rose bit out a sigh. Ate a cookie while staring out the window. “Just tell me what happened, Thorn.”
So, Thorn did, in as much detail as she could remember. Rose listened with intent interest, not contradicting or questioning.
“That explains a great deal,” Rose murmured, almost to herself, though her gaze remained keen on Thorn. “And raises a dozen more questions. When did Moriah visit you the first time?”
“I was upset, because I worried I was sleeping my life away, that Jada was staying away longer and longer and I hated lying there awake while … I was upset,” she repeated, the words seeming inadequate.
But Rose reached across the little table, took her hand, and squeezed it.
Even their hands felt exactly the same, as if she held her own hand—though the one callused and the other polished to brilliance—but the reassuring contact steadied her.
Especially since she rather thought Rose didn’t often touch people casually.
“Of course you were upset,” Rose said carefully. “Thorn, what you’ve endured, all of this, is terrible. And we’re going to get to the root of it, I promise.”