Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
But to Theo, he was just her brother. Her twin.
Yakov got it.
As he got her edginess when they finished up and headed out to the car. Not wanting her to feel cornered, he didn’t immediately bring up the subject on which they intended to talk. Instead, he backed the car out of the parking spot, then drove to park on an overlook with a glittering view of Moscow.
The lights of the city fell onto the black ribbon of the Moskva, making the river ripple with infinite shades of color.
“The wild is far more home to me than the city,” he said, leaning forward with his arms around the steering wheel, “but I do love its beauty at night.”
Theo said nothing. Not for a long time. When she did speak, what she said made his bear’s heart break.
“When Pax first came to me as an adult, I reacted with anger.” Her voice was . . . toneless and gray, as if she’d retreated behind a mile-high wall. “He thinks that it’s because I blame him for keeping his distance during the time when our grandfather was in charge—the truth is, I responded with anger because I didn’t want him tainted by my ugliness.”
Yakov’s chest rumbled. “Theo.” It was a warning. “You don’t get to talk about yourself that way.”
No flashing eyes in response to the possessive edge he hadn’t been able to hide, no prickly retort. She kept on going in that voice monotonous and without emotion. “I knew he had his own scars, had survived his own hell. Imagine, if something horrible happened to your twin while you believed him safe. Perhaps not in the best situation, but safe at least?”
The question hit hard. “It would destroy me.”
“So you see why I could never let Pax know what happened to me. After we were separated at seven years of age, he tried so hard to protect me, even though he was a child himself.”
Yakov’s chest ached; whatever he’d expected to hear, it hadn’t been that. Pax Marshall wasn’t supposed to be a good brother; Pax Marshall certainly wasn’t supposed to be a twin who loved his sister enough that to know of his failure to keep her from harm would destroy him.
Theo, her eyes on the lights of Moscow glittering in the distance, rubbed hard at her bracelet. “The family chose that age to split us up because all the psychological data says that separating twins any younger could cause catastrophic damage. When I say separated, I mean that they cut us off from each other on the telepathic plane as well.”
Yakov muttered a harsh curse. “Nothing? No contact?”
“Not as far as they knew. The truth was their attempts were ninety-eight percent effective—but they couldn’t cut off the connection with which we’d been born. A connection so deep that I don’t think there is any way to cut it off. It will exist as long as both of us are alive.”
He was glad for her, that she’d had that at least.
“I was never good at Silence,” she added. “Later, once Pax was able to get around some of the psychic blocks, he shielded me so that people wouldn’t guess at the depth of my lack of Silence. So for the later years of my childhood, I was considered stable. The same can’t be said of my earlier years.”
Yakov was starting to get a very bad feeling that he knew where this was going. “Did your fucking grandfather take you to that place to be rehabilitated?” He spit out the last word, so angry that he had to remove his hands from the steering wheel lest he rip it off its mounting.
“I think so,” Theo said. “The first flashback was jumbled, but it jarred other things loose. As if my mind has opened a door and now there’s no stopping the return of memory. I don’t see it all . . . but I see enough.”
Her fingers moved even harder on the bracelet. Rubbing. Rubbing. “I see eyes dead of any hint of personhood. I see fear. I see—” Breathing short and sharp, her next words a taut whisper. “There was a chair. With straps.”
Chapter 23
Miles, I commend you for your continued consideration for a 2.7, but the decision has been made as per our majority vote in the contract: Theodora has been rehomed in a situation far more suitable for her. She will be educated as is appropriate to her Gradient level.
—Message from Marshall Hyde to Miles Faber (4 February 2063)
Nineteen Years Ago
THEO WAS SCARED, so scared that it made her bones hurt. She tried to resist being put into that white chair that looked like the reclining chair she had to sit in when the dentist checked her teeth. It was white and leather and it had belt things around it. She wasn’t scared of the dentist—she’d always found it interesting, all the tools he used, and the way he didn’t mind talking to her about what he was doing.