Claiming The Spare Twin novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Said Aloud

The courtyard went so quiet I could hear the lamps hiss.

"She stole it," Odette said again, and now she was crying, ugly and openly, with her hair stuck to her face. "Ask Mother. Ask her what she did!"

"Odette, be silent," my mother said.

She said it low and fast.

It was the first time in my life I had heard fear in her voice.

I stepped forward in Finlay's shirt, with the ring stones cold under my bare feet.

"Yes," I said. "Ask her."

Three hundred faces swung toward my mother.

"Elder," she said, and her voice was steady again, "my daughter is ill. The Moon has overwhelmed her. You will not take a sick girl's raving for evidence."

"I'm not asking them to take Odette's word," I said. "I'm asking them to take yours."

"I have nothing to say."

"Then I'll ask you plain, Mother, in front of everyone."

I took a breath.

"What was in the cup you handed me every morning for ten years?"

She didn't blink.

"Tea," she said. "For your fevers."

"Moonroot," said Finlay.

He had come up beside me, and now he reached behind his back and drew out something thin and black, tied with a ribbon.

My mother saw it, and I watched her stop breathing.

"I took this out of your desk drawer," he said to the elder. "It is in the Beta's own hand. It starts the year the twins turned twelve."

"That is private Beta business," my mother said.

"It has Linnea's name on it, and a day count," Finlay said. "Read the last page, Elder."

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