Claiming The Spare Twin novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Cell

I looked at the cup, and then at my mother.

"You'd put him on trial," I said, "to keep me quiet."

"To keep you safe."

"From what?"

She didn't answer.

I picked up the cup and felt the warmth go through the clay into my hands.

Ten years of mornings. Ten years of her watching me swallow.

I stood, walked to the bars and tipped it out through them onto her shoes.

The tea splashed her gray boots and ran across the flagstones.

"Then let them try him," I said. "I think he has more friends in that courtyard than you do."

My mother looked down at her ruined boots.

She said nothing. She picked up the empty cup and went out, and I heard the key turn.

I sat down on the bench and shook for a long time.

I don't know how long.

The silver studs burned my skin and the damp crept up my legs, and I thought about the way Finlay had counted the faces.

Then I heard footsteps.

Heavy, slow ones, and a man breathing hard through his teeth.

Finlay came around the corner of the passage with a ring of iron keys in his fist and sweat pouring down his face.

The silver in the walls was eating him alive.

I could see it on his skin, in the red blisters rising on his hands where he held the keys.

"Finlay, you can't be in here."

"The old guard at the gate served my father," he said, through clenched jaw. "He's looking at the sky for the next ten minutes."

He unlocked the cell. The door groaned.

He stepped in, and his knees nearly went.

"You idiot," I said, and caught him. "The silver."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine, you're shaking."

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