Page 36 of Kiss the Dawn
I’d barely loaded up my plate when Jules broke the silence.
“So what happened to you?” she asked. “No one will tell me anything.” She pouted. “I mean, you and I would have been best friends. Playmates. But you were taken before I was born.”
“There are eight of us?”
“Nine,” Clara said stiffly.
And only two had bothered to come see me. “Whydidyou come to see me?”
Jules looked confused by the question, but Clara set her fork down. “Because you have every right to want to hold on to the life you’ve built. The others are being short-sighted. There is more to the world than this Isle.”
Maybe I’d been hasty in judging her. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “Also, I was curious.”
I bit back a smile.
“But you didn’t answer my question,” Jules said to me. “Who took you away? Where have you been all this time?”
“The Order, it seems. Or someone working in it, or with it.”
“And the Circle is looking into that,” Frederick said. “There will be a reckoning. I can assure you.”
“I still don’t understand,” Jules said. “It’s impossible to get on or off the Isle without a witch door, so how could they justtakeyou?” She picked at her food and popped some fruit in her mouth. “Makes no sense.”
She was right. It didn’t make sense. I looked to Frederick to find him sharing a pointed look with Clara.
I put my fork down. “What was that look?”
Clara shook her head. “You might as well tell her, Grandsire.”
Frederick looked like he would rather do anything but that, but I fixed my attention on him and waited.
He took a gulp of his wine. “Once the covens realized that Eliza Bloodmere’s inability to produce offspring was not a medical issue, they concluded that the ancient blessing hadn’t passed to her. So they turned to the one person who might have answers as to why…Your mother. It was ascertained, after much investigation, that you had not perished as she claimed. They learned that the dead child she had presented to her family had belonged to a serving girl who’d given birth a few days prior. Both mother and child had passed away. Your mother replaced you with that child and gave you to an unnamed individual, who smuggled you off the Isle. We believe your mother orchestrated the escape, including the opening of a doorway, which was struck from our records. The record keeper from that time met with an accident a few days after your supposed death and was also killed.”
It took a moment to absorb it all. “My mother faked my death and gave me away?”
“Yes,” Frederick said. “And now she must answer for her crime.”
I looked to Jules, who’d gone as white as snow, then to Clara, who had her head down. “What is the punishment?”
Frederick took another gulp of his wine. “She will be put to death at dawn.”
Chapter 13
Jules let out a shocked cry and stared at Clara. “What is he saying? Clara? Oh God, you knew?”
Clara pressed her lips together. “Everyone knows except you and Adaline. The babies of the family.”
“I’m a married woman with a child. I am not a baby.” She slammed her fist on the table, rattling her cutlery.
Clara rolled her eyes. “I rest my case.”
“You can’t do this!” Jules cried. “We have to stop it.”
She was right. “Death seems too harsh a sentence for her crime. In fact, I’m not sure you can call it a crime. I’m alive and well, and maybe that was what she’d intended for me. Did you even ask herwhyshe did it?”
Frederick replied. “She claims it was to protect youfrom the weight of a duty that you’d have no choice in. She claims she was giving you a better life.”
