Lynet’s stomach lurched, remembering Gregory telling her that she was his true daughter. She felt a pang of sympathy for the girl who had become her stepmother, living alone with a man who saw her as a failed experiment, a blemish on his own abilities. She was worth nothing to him, and Lynet knew that Mina must have felt it every day of her life.
If I’d had a father like yours growing up maybe I wouldn’t care about being queen either.
Mina had told Lynet that no one could ever love her, but Mina’s mother had loved her—the proof of it was here, in three words written at the bottom of the page. Lynet wondered if Gregory knew about Dorothea’s letter, if he had lied to Mina about her mother’s death. Glancing warily in the direction of the laboratory door, Lynet tucked the letter into the front of her dress.
She started to rise from the floor when a burst of pain in her chest forced her back to her knees. Her heart was racing, a frantic bird trying to escape tightening constraints, and when she tried to move, her surroundings all bled together and her head started to pound. She tried to take deep breaths, but they sounded more like sobs instead. Was this because she had been away from the snow for too long? Had she let herself grow too weak?
Trying to think clearly, Lynet emptied some of her purse into her cupped hands and let the coins become snow again. She nearly sobbed into the pile of snow, such a relief was it against her fevered skin. For the few minutes before the snow melted through her fingers, the world stopped spinning and Lynet started to breathe more normally. The pain had lessened, but her heart was still speeding, and she felt utterly drained, bloodless—
Bloodless. Lynet thought of the blood she’d given to Gregory last night. Was that why she was so weak today? Had the loss of the blood exhausted her beyond her limits, or were Gregory’s experiments affecting her, pulling on some invisible thread between her blood and her heart?
Lynet staggered to her feet, tucking away her purse. She had to stop Gregory before he conducted any more tests. He must not have known.… But then, that letter from Dorothea proved that Gregory knew more than he revealed.
There was no lock on the door, so Lynet burst into the laboratory without warning, not giving Gregory the chance to deny her entrance.
The laboratory was larger than she’d expected, a round room with a high window that let in the golden sunlight of the South. The room reminded Lynet of Nadia’s workroom—the same assortment of jars on shelves, the same long table, though this one was covered in glass apparatuses that she had never seen before.
And yet, this room was as different from Nadia’s as Nadia was from Gregory. It was the difference between the natural darkness of night and the stale darkness of the crypt.
Gregory had been hunched over the far end of the table, but he looked up in surprise when he heard the door. “If you wanted to come in, Lynet, you only had to knock,” he said.
“What are you doing with my blood?” she demanded.
“Exactly what I told you. And I’m very pleased with the results. Come,” he said with an eager wave of his hand, “let me show you what you can do.”
Lynet made her way across the room, passing shelves full of jars with unknown contents, including a withered, brownish lump that made her shudder violently for some reason. At the far end of the table was the now empty vial that had held her blood. She peered down at the table, trying to understand the relationship between the items of the strange collection gathered there. Alongside the vial were small piles of sand, as well as two open glass jars. In one of the jars was another pile of sand, but in the other was a small field mouse, its tiny paws trying to climb the side of the jar.
“Do you see?” Gregory said, gripping her upper arm to bring her closer. “The mouse is yours—made from sand and blood—your blood. You can only work with snow, but with your blood, I can shape anything. And the mouse has a heartbeat, which means it’s truly alive, Lynet.”
Lynet put her fingertip against the jar and watched as the mouse tried to paw at her through the glass. She heard the excitement in Gregory’s voice, but all she felt was empty. “When you used my blood to make this, it nearly killed me,” she said, her voice strained. She looked up at Gregory. “Did you know that would happen?”
Gregory snorted. “Oh, you’re exaggerating. It’s disorienting at first, I know, but that initial weakness will pass. Creating you nearly killed me, of course, but humans are complex, and I had a number of failed experiments before I managed to get you just right. Not to mention I was much older than you at the time, whereas you, Lynet … you’re still so young, your heart so strong. You have so much life to give.…”
There was a hunger in his eyes as he reached out to touch her cheek, and Lynet flinched away. She still had her dagger at her waist under her cloak. She needed to distract him so she could reach for it without his noticing. “I … I’m still not feeling well,” she said. “Perhaps I should go.”
His eyes darted toward the door, and Lynet knew he was thinking that if he let her out that door now, she would never come back. He edged closer to her and shook his head in confusion. “You can’t leave now. You’re the answer I’ve been searching for. All these years, I’ve been trying to reverse the effects of your creation—my aging, my weakness. I even came here hoping medicine would help me since magic only worsened my condition, but to no success. Think of all that potential wasted, Lynet! I had only begun to discover what I could do before I grew too weak to continue. But now that you’re here, we can unlock all the secrets of our magic together. If you stay here with me, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish together. This is what you were meant for.”
Lynet took a small step backward. She had always thought she was meant to become her mother—and now, finally, here was confirmation that she wasn’t her mother, that she had a purpose and an ability that was all her own. She had been torn between wanting answers about the nature of her existence and wanting to leave her old life behind—and now Gregory could offer her both. She could be reborn in his image instead of her mother’s. Was that what she wanted?
“Mina and your father kept you away from me,” Gregory continued. “They made you scared of me, but I knew—I always knew—that there was a chance that we were alike, that you would share my gifts.” He smiled at her, and perhaps it was only the way the light from the window hit his face, but he seemed younger now, some color in his wasted cheeks, a hopeful glimmer in his eyes. How different he was from her own father, how willing to let her see the most fearsome and powerful parts of herself.
He nodded, sensing her waning resistance. “In all the world, you’re the only one who can help me,” he said. “I’ve been wasting away for so long, Lynet—would you leave me now? Who else can guide you like I can?”
Who else? His words echoed in her head, overlapping each other in an endless, muddled stream. And then the answer came to her with the sharpness and clarity of glass—
Mina.
Mina had power over glass, and Gregory didn’t know that. He had spent the past sixteen years trying to reach Lynet, but he had never even bothered to consider his own daughter. He could never help me cure her. He doesn’t know Mina at all. And if he didn’t know his own daughter, didn’t understand why Lynet would want to help her, then how could he ever understand Lynet?