“Your stepmother.”
“No,” Lynet said. “It was always you I wanted, from the first time you found me hiding in that tree. My mother is the woman who watched me grow, who combed my hair every night with her own hands. You’re the mother I chose, the one I love.”
Lynet stepped toward her again, offering so much, asking so much, and all Mina could do was take a step back and look away from her. “You can’t love me,” she muttered. “You can’t.”
But Lynet was in front of her now, taking her hands, holding them tightly. “How can you believe that? During all these years, didn’t you see how much I loved you?”
Mina pulled herself out of Lynet’s reach, her back against the door. She had allowed herself to be cornered, and she resented Lynet for doing this to her, for making her words sound so true, so real, when Mina knew they never could be.
“You don’t understand,” Mina said. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.” She swept Lynet aside so she could pass around her, almost tripping over the dusty armchair to reach the center of the room.
Her back was to Lynet, but Mina could still hear her say, “That’s why I went south. I wanted to know more about you. I wanted to know myself, too. I thought Gregory could give me those answers. I thought he could help me find a cure for you, for your heart.”
A laugh escaped Mina, scraping her throat. She turned to Lynet slowly. “And were you successful in finding a cure for my heart?”
Lynet shook her head, still standing tall, but her eyes betrayed her fear, her doubt. “If I failed, it’s because I looked for answers in the wrong place. Gregory doesn’t know you at all. He’s never understood either one of us, or the bond we’ve shared. My father didn’t understand either.”
“So is there a cure for me, do you think?” Mina said, trying to sound cynical, but unable to prevent that one note of hope on the last word.
The silence that followed seemed endless, and Mina wanted to say something else, to stop her from saying anything at all, when Lynet answered, “I’m not sure that you need one, but—” Her voice wavered, and she took a breath before continuing. “But I brought something for you—a letter. Your guards took it from me when they found me in the woods, but it’s for you. I wanted you to read it. And … there’s something else I thought of.” Lynet was fiddling with her dress, smiling shyly. “It’s … it’s childish, maybe, but…”
Lynet dropped the piece of fabric she was playing with and looked up at her. She walked over to Mina in the middle of the room and held one hand up in front of her, her palm facing Mina. “Hold your hand up, like this.”
Mina didn’t understand, but she held her hand up to mirror Lynet’s, palms facing each other.
Lynet brought her hand closer until her fingertips were pressing against Mina’s. “Now push,” she said.
They pressed their fingertips together, forming a web of flesh with their fingers. “What is this for?” Mina said.
“Just wait,” Lynet said. “Close your eyes.”
She waited until Lynet had closed her own eyes before doing the same. More time passed, and she was beginning to wonder if Lynet was setting some kind of trap for her.
And then she felt it.
There, in the tips of her fingers, she felt the steady beat of Lynet’s pulse. But the longer she held her fingers there, the harder she pressed back, the more it seemed like the pulse was coming from inside her own body. Or rather, it became impossible to tell whose body it came from. It was Lynet’s pulse, she knew, but it was also, miraculously, her own. It reverberated through her hand, down her arm, into her chest, and she wondered how she’d lived all these years without that gentle rhythm.
The pulse that was and yet wasn’t hers seemed to dislodge something in her, her blood flowing more freely now, and she felt everything at once—the grief of Lynet’s death combined with the shock of hearing she was alive, the shame Mina had felt in seeing her again, together with the hope she’d heard in Lynet’s voice as she insisted that she loved her as a mother.
Mina’s eyes stung—she was crying.
Startled by Mina’s tears, Lynet moved her hand away, and Mina was overwhelmed with the sudden emptiness of their broken connection. Lynet was staring at her with worry, and Mina could have embraced her then, this girl whose heart was so strong and so full that it could beat for the both of them.
Mina ran for the door, needing to get away from Lynet before she gave in to fear and her father’s voice, always whispering in her head.
“Promise me you’ll find that letter,” Lynet called after her, her own voice ragged with the start of tears.
Mina fumbled for the door, ignoring her.
“Mina, please promise me you’ll read it!”
But Mina was shutting the door behind her, muffling Lynet’s voice. She started to lock the door out of habit, but then she stopped, leaving the key in the lock. What Lynet did now was up to her.
Lynet’s last words still rang through her head as she went down the tower stairs. Promise me you’ll read it. There was a letter, something she supposed Lynet had written for her. But when Mina came down from the tower, she went straight to the chapel, some invisible line pulling her there whenever she needed refuge. She fell to her knees in front of the altar, and she put her hand over her chest, half believing that she would feel the gentle pressure of her own heartbeat, transferred from Lynet to her.
But there was nothing, of course. Nothing had truly changed. The truth still hung like a vicious blade between them: Only one of them could be queen. Only one of them could win.
32
LYNET
She’ll read it, Lynet told herself as she paced around the circular room, biting her thumb. She’ll read it, and she’ll come back to me and everything will be all right.
Lynet hadn’t wanted to tell Mina the letter’s contents or even that it was from Dorothea, unsure that Mina would believe her unless she read the letter herself. But there were still so many dangers. Did the guard who had taken the letter from her still have it? Would Mina track him down and read it? And even if she read it, would it make any difference at all?