He nodded to her in understanding. “Go on your way, then,” he said, “and I’ll go on mine.”
They both watched each other for a moment, and then almost at the same time, they both headed off in opposite directions. Lynet looked back once to make sure he wasn’t following or watching after her, but he was gone.
*
Lynet only had to wait a few minutes perched on the windowsill before she heard the loud squeak of the door opening behind her. Nadia appeared in the doorway, holding a lit candle that somehow seemed to throw the room even more into flickering shadow. She had her surgeon’s bag with her as well.
“This is a very tall tower,” she said, slightly out of breath.
Lynet shrugged, glancing down at the ledges and footholds she’d used to climb from a nearby tree up to the tower window. She hopped down from the window and sat on the rug in the center of the room. Nadia knelt down to join her, placing the candle between them and leaning in.
The climb had taken all of her attention, and so she felt calm and focused now, especially next to Nadia’s lingering breathlessness. “Do you know where we are?” she said.
“The North Tower,” Nadia answered at once. “Like your note said.”
Lynet shook her head, the shadow of her curls dancing along the wall. “Not just that. We’re directly above the royal crypt. I go there once a year with my father, to visit my mother’s resting place. We went the other day, before you told me that she didn’t die giving birth to me at all.”
Nadia cringed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d want to know. I thought anyone would want to know. I never meant to frighten you away.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” Lynet said quickly. “I just needed to … to think about what you had said.”
Nadia offered an apologetic smile. “So you’re not angry with me?”
“Not anymore,” Lynet said. “I’m glad I know the truth.”
Nadia’s whole body seemed to loosen with relief. She pulled something out of her bag and handed it to Lynet, careful not to let it touch the candle flame. “This belonged to Master Jacob, the surgeon before me. I found it in the cellar with the other old records, and I thought it could help you.”
“Have you read it yourself?” Lynet said, taking the thin, worn journal.
Lynet knew from her uncertain pause that Nadia had indeed looked at it even before she answered. “I did. There’s a little more detail about you, but not on the creation itself.”
Lynet started flipping through the journal, stopping when she saw Emilia’s name. She read the account of her mother’s illness, her father’s desperation as he summoned a notorious magician from the South to help save her. When she died, he had asked the magician to create a daughter for him, a girl who would resemble her mother exactly. The magician had created the girl out of snow and his own blood, which held the power to create life. Lynet kept reading, seeing herself from a distance—not as a human being, but as some strange and unnatural experiment.
Lynet set the journal down, breathing evenly. She wished now that Nadia hadn’t read these pages. Everyone else saw her as her mother’s child, but at least they still saw her as human. Lynet kept her eyes on the candle flame, following its movements. “What do you see when you look at me?” she said.
Nadia’s voice was guarded when she answered. “What do you mean?”
“Do you see me now like I’m … a curiosity? Something unnatural or … or a copy of my mother?”
“I never knew your mother.”
Lynet looked up at her and tried to smile. “That wasn’t an answer to my question.”
Nadia went silent, and Lynet tried to read her, but she was half in shadow. Lynet waited for the answer with growing dread—she had been designed from the outside in, after all, her face painted on like that of a doll. Who was she, if not a copy meant to be compared to the original?
“No,” Nadia said at last, her voice making Lynet jump. “I definitely don’t just see you as a curiosity, or a shadow of someone else. But I don’t have all of the answers you want. I can’t tell you more than what’s in that journal—”
“But you can,” Lynet said. “The journal says my skin is always cold to the touch, but I have no way of knowing if that’s true on my own.” She inched closer, reached out for Nadia’s hand, and pressed it against the exposed skin below her throat. “Is it true?” she said. “Am I cold?”
Though she was startled at first, her hand jumping under Lynet’s, Nadia soon went still, her eyes moving slowly up from their hands to Lynet’s face. She was no longer in shadow, and for a moment Lynet thought she saw worry in her eyes—but perhaps that was only the reflection of the flame.
“Well?” Lynet said quietly.
Nadia pulled her hand away. “That was the wrong test,” she said, her eyes flickering from the skin of Lynet’s throat back up to her face.
“Oh?” Lynet said. “Then what would be the right test?”
Nadia smiled at Lynet’s playful tone, and she pushed the candle forward. “Your skin is cold, but anyone’s skin would be cold in a drafty tower like this one. The real test will be if your skin ever grows warm.” She nodded toward the candle. “Warm your hand over the flame, but don’t burn yourself.”
Lynet had played this game plenty of times over the years. It was another way to rid herself of that discomfort in her skin, putting her hand over an open flame, moving it closer and closer until she lost her nerve and moved it away. She did it now for Nadia, letting the flame warm her skin.
After a minute or so, Nadia moved the candle away and took her hand. “What do you feel now?” she said, tilting her head but never dropping her gaze. “Does your hand feel warm?”
She ran the roughened pad of her thumb over Lynet’s palm, and Lynet’s heart gave an odd little jump that she couldn’t explain. “Yes, I’m warm,” she said, her voice a breathless whisper.
A slow smile curled on Nadia’s lips. “That’s strange,” she said. “To me, you don’t feel warm at all. Your skin is still cold to the touch.”
Lynet pulled her hand away, peering down at it and trying to find the answers she wanted in its lines. “How can that be?”
Nadia shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe anything that isn’t cold feels warm to you, but the cold feels neutral. You’ve soaked in the heat, like some kind of sponge, but the surface still stays cold.”
“So you’re saying my insides don’t match my outsides?” She laughed dryly. “I could have told you that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m my mother on the outside. I look like her. I sound like her. Put a crown on my head, and no one will be able to tell the difference.”