Read Online Sisters' Fate by Jessica Spotswood - Free Book Online Page B

room. Tess brings her meals and visits her between classes to keep her company. I don’t know what they talk about. Visions, perhaps, trying to piece together how things will play out.
    I’ve just changed into my Sisterly black when Rilla pops back into our room. She’s all ready for the bazaar, her short brown curls artfully arranged around her freckled face.
    “You’ve decided to come?” she asks. “You look pretty.”
    I glare at her. “I do not.” I look like a tall, skinny blond vulture in the Sisters’ uniform. I always do.
    “Hush and take the compliment,” she insists, braving a hug. She smells like hot cocoa and the maple candies her mother’s always sending from their farm in Vermont. “Are you all right? You seem . . . pricklier than usual.”
    “I’m fine.” I’m not fine. What’s O’Shea cooking up now? Hundreds of Brothers will be at the bazaar. Any of us could make a misstep and be arrested. Things seem so on edge. And beyond that—
    “Are you worried Finn will be there?” Rilla cuts right to the heart of it.
    My breath catches in my throat, and I feel such a coward. Am I that obvious, that pitiful, that everyone can see the truth written on my face?
    “I don’t know,” I whisper, burying my head in my hands. “I miss him. So much. I want to see him but—he won’t know me. Not really. It’s so awful, Rilla.”
    Rilla plants her hands on her sturdy hips and gives a fierce little scowl. “I could slap that sister of yours.”
    “Me too.” I give her a weak smile, sliding on a pair of earbobs and glamouring them to look like rubies, to match my new necklace. “But it’s done now, isn’t it? There’s nothing I can do.”
    “Are you sure of that?” Rilla picks up one of her Gothic novels. “You know, in
The Duke and I,
the duke is in a hunting accident; he falls off his horse and knocks his head and loses his memory. It’s amnesia, not magic. But he and the duchess fall in love with each other all over again.”
    “That’s impossible,” I say shortly.
    “Is it?” Rilla guides me to the dressing table, sits me down, and begins to braid my hair. “If Finn fell in love with you once, what’s to say he couldn’t do it again? You know him. Know what he likes. You could orchestrate things in your favor.”
    Hope thrums through my chest, but I quash it. “That seems dishonest. Starting off with secrets between us.” Like my parents. Mother erased Father’s memory, leaving him unaware that she was a witch and he had three witchy daughters. It kept him safe from the Brothers, but I can’t imagine their marriage was ever the same.
    Rilla skewers the braids into place around the crown of my head. “You could tell him the truth, then. How you fell in love and what Maura did.”
    “Just like that?” I snap my fingers. “What if he turned her in?” I shake my head. Furious as I am, I cannot be responsible for Maura ending up—where? Without Harwood, where would they send a witch guilty of mind-magic? She would be executed.
    I smooth my black skirts. “And it could be dangerous for him. What if she saw us together? What’s to keep her or Inez from attacking him again and leaving him like—like Covington and the others? I can’t take that chance.”
    Rilla’s shoulders slump. “I suppose you’re right. I just hate to see you so unhappy, Cate.”
    I stare down at my clenched hands. “Me too.”
    • • •
    Hundreds of people mill through Richmond Square Gardens, all bundled up in their winter finery: ladies in fur hoods and men with their collars turned up against the cold. Lanterns swing from majestic red maples, sending light skittering over the crowd. Children run up and down the makeshift aisles playing tag while their mamas examine the merchandise. The bazaar is meant to benefit the poor, but I don’t see many of them here. Now that the Brothers have outlawed women working, more families are struggling to make ends meet than ever. They’ve barely got