Page 30 of Claiming Glass

There was truth behind the words spilling out of her. “Lumi paid you to not tell me?”Had she kept money from me as well?

“Your mother paid me when you were five. I bound your powers, splitting you and your sister.”

“Why would she do such a thing?”

A distant expression swept over her face. “You and your sister communicated mind to mind. First people joked about twins, but then you started talking to others insidetheirminds. It was when your mother realized that you commanded the living and dead, just before your fifth birthday. One of you—it doesn’t matter which one because you were one person in two bodies—commanded her to get you matching blue dresses you’d seen in Midtown. She tried to say no, but before she knew it, she had stolen the dresses and was pursued by the store owner. You’d taken over her mind. A three-day later she came to me with the jewels your father had given her and told me to do whatever I could to make you normal. When itwasn’t enough, she returned with more money and a golden wedding band on her finger.”

Lumi and I had truly been one? Was this sense of losing her an effect of a curse that’d lasted too long?Why did no one tell me anything?This was my life. I could not question my mother, so Popova got my anger. “We had magic and Mother paid you to remove it?”

“Think it through, girl. Someone would have come for you. You were too powerful, too strange to pass without training. Use you or kill you, either way they would have taken you from everything you knew. You would have become weapons instead of children. I offered to take you in. Your mother said you had to stay with her. That your father would come. Getting yourself involved in this mess goes against all her wishes.”

Popova believed her words, but she did not know what we had gone through. My mother would not have wanted this if she’d known what her decisions would lead to. And even if she had, I was done living to please her. I would be kind, I would work for a better tomorrow, but it would be on my terms.

“What did you do to me?” I whispered.

“I did what she asked—spent my second curse on you two. Binding your magic and thus separating you and your sister. You developed into your own person, not part of someone else. You got a childhood.”

“And two years ago?”

“Truly valuing something above your own life breaks the curse because that is ultimately what you risk. For your sister it was revenge on those who hurt her. That girl didn’t care what it did to her.” Popova searched my face. “What was it for you? Duty? Grief? Love? During the fire, you stood for aguard. Was he worth throwing awayyour life? We all heard your call. That’s power, girl. If you work for me, I’ll give you what you value.”

I ignored her comments, caught in memories of how I had found my sister collapsed in Kirill’s courtyard when I returned from my one and only dalliance. I had been excited to tell her all about it until I saw her split face and heard her fever ramblings.Revenge above her own life.

“Why did she keep it from me?”Why did Lumi, smart, cautious, calculating Lumi, keep taking such risks?The bond was still there, floating in the back of my mind—reduced, distant, but there.

Popova leaned across the table until her forehead almost touched mine. “Pain does strange things to people. Your sister wants Tal to be better. Wants us all to be better, no matter the risks. Tal is a kettle set over the flames long ago. Each time it boils over they slam on the lid again, but if enough water escapes even the fire will die.”

I calmed my breaths. This was about more than me and my family. “Do you know where the food is? Do you work with the one who hired us a month ago?”

Fear flashed through Popova, and she looked like she wanted to spit on the pristine floorboards. “Like being ruled by the Temple will be any better than the royals. Too many believeherand her corrupted priestesses though. They want blood, and not just the royals’. Your sister informed me—sensed her—and we made our own deal. I know nothing of any missing food.”

When I was a girl, my mother took me here to buy tonics and tinctures. The pungent scents brought back memories of sharply dressed customers arriving on the poor street. Popova had already been a power then. Until now, I had not realized part of me thought she might have all the answers. What could I, or even Dimitri,do against an undead queen? Lumi had been working with Popova after learning about Ealhswip from Morovara. Lumi had organized the break in at the Mekeln manor. If there was anything I knew about my sister, it was that she did not act without a plan. Why could she not have shared it with me?

“But surely you’re already doing something?” The words came out small despite my confident front.

Popova shook her head. “Child, we all make our own moves. I do what I can to protect our streets—thoseunnatural thingswill not break into Lowtown homes again. But don’t leave your dead behind, for there is no knowing what might happen to them—I cleaned up your mess.Once.”

“Alexei and Kirill?”

When she nodded, I did not dare to ask for details, fearful what the answer might be. One I hoped she had thrown into the Taliell, the other deserved last rights and a place in the Grove. Dimitri might want answers, but this was not one that would give him any peace.

As the chance of external help vanished, my resolve hardened. “If I bring you a chance to stop the priestesses, will you help?”

I held my breath, emotions passing through her too fast for me to understand.

“Offer me a real opportunity, and we can talk, little heart turner.”

I pulled my hands away. Despite my suspicions, every word had been truthful.

Two notes combined inside me—a seed of a plan. Something I could bring to Dimitri and Lumi as a partner instead of a beggar. At Morovara’s, I’d thought I could be a bridge. But if I was to bring people together, I needed my other half.

“And my sister, where is she?” I asked, repeating my initial question.

“Family is the most important thing in the world. I have built my success on it. Power flows from one generation to the next. But I have also built it on never breaking my word.”

“Then you’ll keep her from me?”

Popova leaned forward. “Magic like your sister’s comes once a generation. So does yours—if you learn to use it before it overwhelms you. Come back when I cannot refuse you.”

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