Felix now put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Mina?”
Mina dropped the letter carefully on the ground and turned to take Felix’s face in her hands, studying him intently. All those times he had said he loved her—had he truly meant them all? Even now, when he was angry with her, he had stayed with her simply because she had asked him to. She shyly ran her thumb along the line of his mouth, and she remembered what he had said to her in the crypt. And when I touched you, it felt like the first time, the night you made me. She felt that way now, because it was the first time—the first time they were both alive together, separate and yet the same. The first time she felt an unfamiliar warmth spread through her chest and knew that she loved him, as he loved her.
“Oh, Felix, I’m sorry,” she breathed, thinking of how she had almost wanted to kill him that night.
She started to draw away, but he caught her hand in his and brought his head down to press his lips to the veins on her wrist, where her pulse should have been, embracing the parts of her that she thought were broken, just as he always had. And then they were both in each other’s arms—him holding her fiercely, one hand buried in her hair, her murmuring “You love me” over and over again against his cheek.
“Lynet was right,” he said, pulling away from her. “She said that letter might do you some good.”
Mina couldn’t answer. Her mother had still abandoned her, leaving her to her father, and Mina felt a wave of resentment, a dizzying sort of despair as she wondered how her life might have been different if Dorothea had been brave enough to stay or to take Mina with her. I wish I could be stronger for you. And yet when Mina said those words to herself, she didn’t hear her mother’s voice, but her own—I wish I could be stronger for Lynet. Dorothea had run away from being a mother. Mina had not run away, but she had still failed Lynet. It was only the dead mothers who were perfect—the living ones were messy and unpredictable.
Is there a cure for me, do you think?
I’m not sure that you need one.
Lynet had known. She had understood that Mina’s heart wasn’t as damaged as either Mina or Gregory had claimed. She had read the letter, but more than that, Lynet had loved her. Even now, Lynet loved her. And Mina … Mina made her decision at last. She would do what her mother hadn’t been able to do—she would protect her daughter.
Mina rose from the chapel floor, picking up the letter, and walked toward the door. Felix followed close behind. “Is she still in the tower, do you think?” she asked him. “I left the door unlocked.”
“I would think she is,” he answered. “The guards said she came freely, without trying to run or fight.”
Mina would go to her, then, and Lynet would see that she had the letter, and she would know at once—that Lynet had understood her better than Mina understood herself. And the crown? The Summer Castle? a treacherous voice whispered in her ear. Only one of you can be queen. It was true. She faltered in her step as she hurried down the long hall that led to the east wing, and Felix held her arm to keep her from stumbling. But what was the false and fickle devotion of Whitespring compared to the love that Lynet had shown her? What was the heavy feeling of a crown on her head compared to the pressure of Lynet’s fingertips against hers, as she had lent Mina her heart? It was only the South that she still wanted, the South that gave her reign any meaning at all, but would Lynet even want to take that from her, as Nicholas had?
I have to trust her, she thought. I have to earn her trust in me. She continued toward the stairs that would take her up to the North Tower—
—where she nearly collided with her father, headed in the opposite direction. He looked worse than she had ever seen him before, his skin stretched taut over his bony frame, and he jumped when he saw her, reaching for the wall to support him.
Mina ran her thumb along the paper in her hand, remembering the words written there. Her mother had run away from Gregory because she didn’t know how to protect her child from him. Mina wouldn’t allow herself to do the same.
“I won’t do it,” she said as she approached him near the stairs. “I won’t poison her.”
Gregory laughed weakly. “I’m not surprised,” he said, waving his hand dismissively in her direction. “You’ve always allowed that girl to manipulate you.”
For a moment, Mina’s vision went red, and then she thrust the letter at him. “Is that why she gave me this?”
He took the letter from her, but there was no sign of recognition as he frowned down at it. He unfolded the page and only then did his face fall, his hands tightening on the paper. “Where did you get this?” he hissed.
“Ask Lynet. She’s the one who found it, probably when she was with you. You told me my mother was dead. You told me she killed herself because she hated me—” She cut herself off, her voice wavering dangerously as she spoke aloud words that she’d only ever thought to herself in shame.
He looked ready to tear the paper in two, he was clutching it so tightly, and so Mina snatched it back from him, tearing a corner of it in the process. “I didn’t hide that letter from you,” Gregory said, his voice a low growl. “I must have tucked it away somewhere and forgotten about it; otherwise I would have burned it. Does it matter whether your mother is dead or not? She abandoned us both.”
Mina shook her head. “No, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she loved me, as much as she could, and you told me that I can’t love or be loved. Was that a lie too?”
He hesitated, eyes darting still to the letter in her hand. At last he said, “I don’t know.”
She choked back a whimper. “Of course you don’t know. You’ve never known anything about love.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. He knew that if he raised his daughter without love, and that if he told her often enough that she wasn’t capable of it, she would soon start to prove him right, if only because it was all she’d ever known. He had reshaped her in his own image, not by taking out her heart, but by convincing her that she was as unable to love as he was.
Gregory’s face contorted, and he started to reach for her when his eyes went to Felix, standing aside in the hall. His hand dropped, and he said in a fierce whisper, “You’re nothing like me. If you were, that girl would have been dead hours ago.”
“I’ll protect her from you,” Mina said. “I won’t let you near Lynet ever again. Nicholas was right to keep you away from her. Do you understand? I will not hurt her, and I won’t let you do it either.”
Gregory pouted at her in a semblance of pity, but his eyes were glittering with some secret amusement. “Oh, Mina, you’re the one who doesn’t understand. It’s already been done.”
She took a startled step back. “What did you say?”