Chapter 18 #3
“No.” Rose laughed. “There are people skilled in psychic magic who can, but not me. I feel like I’m able to …
I don’t know. Read your face really well.
Almost feel your emotions. Maybe because being with you is like being with myself.
” She rubbed her fingertips together thoughtfully.
“Almost like you’re part of me. It’s uncanny, really. ”
“It is,” Thorn agreed. Perhaps that was part of why she felt so odd. “But,” she added shyly, “it’s really nice. For me. I always wanted a sister.”
Rose tilted her head, considering. “You know, I did, too. I always felt like someone was missing. Like I’d lost something, but didn’t know what it was. It could be we remember each other, from the womb.” She waggled her brows. “Stranger things are true. I’m going to find out what the truth is.”
Restless, Thorn stood and gathered the detritus of their meal, if you could call devouring cookies a meal. “You’re going to leave,” she said, hoping that if she said it first it would hurt less. Of course Rose had to leave.
“I have to,” Rose said, echoing Thorn’s thought in that uncanny way of hers.
“I thought you were going to help me.” Not abandon her, too. Thorn had to choke back the tears, feeling wobbly again. Did Rose ever weep? Probably not.
“I am going to help you, but I need information first. And that investigation begins with a very important first step. I’m going to go talk to our mother.”
Their mother. Somehow, in all of this startling, revelatory, and thoroughly emotionally shattering conversation, it hadn’t once occurred to Thorn that she had a mother out there.
And a father, too, most likely. That is, of course she had a father, but one that was around?
Rose hadn’t mentioned one, though she hadn’t mentioned a mother until that moment either and somehow, in the stroke of a few words, Thorn wasn’t an orphan. She had a mother.
Maybe.
If the identical-twins-separated-at-birth thing was real, which seemed awfully unlikely.
It seemed more like the stuff of fiction than any kind of plausible explanation.
Not that Thorn had a better one. But … a mother.
Her heart leapt with a hopeful joy, like a bluebird taking flight—until her mind caught up and reminded her of the next logical step.
A mother who had given Thorn up, told everyone her baby had died.
Who had sent her to live with Jada in this cottage.
Who’d sentenced her to a life of sleep and nothing while her other daughter received the finest everything.
Who had not only abandoned her, like everyone else had, but also gave her over to misery.
Rose tapped her hand, grimacing. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. I can’t imagine what’s going through your head right now.”
She seemed to do pretty well. “Our—your mother,” she corrected, not completely ready to acknowledge her yet, “what is she like? And, do you—we—have a father?” The moment the question slipped past her lips, Thorn wanted to drag it back.
But Rose didn’t scoff or snicker. Instead she wore an expression of rueful compassion.
“Both,” she answered. “They are Lady Shoshan and Lord Clotaire of Northbrooke. Both sorcerers, though not oneiromancers. We have oneiromancers in the family, but several generations back. Theirs is an arranged marriage. They were brought together by the clients holding their contracts entirely on the possibility that they could breed an oneiromancer child of my—our—potential.” She grimaced.
“They don’t really get along all that well, though individually they’re fine people.
Fortunately they’re not often in an enclosed space together,” she added with a wry familiarity Thorn envied.
In a flash, she could see her life as it might have been, as vividly as a memory in reverse—growing up with Rose as her sister, knowing her mother and father, she and Rose sharing the joke, Oh, no, don’t let Mum and Da be in the same room!
She both wanted to cry and wanted to rage about the unfairness of it all.
She cleared her throat instead, trying to think of something to say back to the patiently waiting Rose.
“Shoshan means rose,” she noted in a dull voice.
Rose frowned. “It does? I suppose I didn’t know that, or didn’t think about it.”
“I have a lot of time to read, at least the books that I’m allowed to. But don’t you see? It can’t be a coincidence. She is the rose, as are you, and I’m the thorn she clipped away.”
Looking stricken, Rose didn’t seem to have an immediate reply.
“It can be a coincidence,” she finally said, then held up a hand to stop Thorn’s next words.
“Besides, you were named Lily. It’s carved on your—” She stopped abruptly.
“Probably this Jada called you ‘Thorn’ just to be cruel. And what if our mother didn’t give you away—have you thought of that?
Maybe Jada stole you. Maybe our mother truly believes you died. ”
Thorn’s battered heart wanted to believe it. “It’s possible,” she replied slowly, “that everyone but you knew that I hadn’t died.”
Rose stared at her long and hard, her face a lovely, neutral mask that Thorn was learning meant the sophisticated woman was thinking hard.
“It’s possible,” she finally acknowledged.
“I really don’t know where the lies started, how and why you ended up here with Jada, but I do know where I have to ask that first question.
Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Thorn did and didn’t. That is, she understood Rose’s logic, but she didn’t like it. “I understand. It’s just that, and this probably doesn’t make any sense, but it’s going to be lonely with you gone.”
Rose smiled, close-lipped and sorrowful. “It makes perfect sense. I promise I’ll be back. Soon.”