Read Online The Hidden Twin by Adi Rule - Free Book Online Page A

so we can forget it ever existed. The soup tastes like gutters and woe, like the disease-ridden end of the world. Jey thinks it’s hilarious. And it is rather funny, us sitting here eating this disaster like it’s any normal supper. I hold my nose and slurp. Jey bursts out laughing.
    â€œI will never successfully raise a plant,” she says.
    â€œMaybe you’ve cultivated an entirely new breed of tomato,” I offer. “We could call it the Brown Beauty.”
    Jey grins. “Or the Rotten Delight!”
    â€œOr the Caldaras Upchuck!”
    Papa’s beard shudders as he pours the brownish slime into his mouth. He snorts a chuckle. “This soup is nothing to be ashamed of. When you can raise red tomatoes on Saltball Street, you’ll be ready to garden for the Empress herself. And I noticed you did an excellent job with the peonies today, Jey.”
    The peonies. I remember their fragrance, an emotion more than an actual memory of the scent. I see the velvet bloom I refused to accept slipping out of sight among the leaves.
    A knock at the door freezes us.
    Knocks are never good. When it’s just Papa and me outside, even a friend might be convinced I am my sister if something seems suspicious. But in here, there are two of us. Twins, with no holy scars on our foreheads to mark us as human. There’s no explaining that away.
    Papa pauses with his soupspoon in the air. I am already throwing my half-finished supper in the mulch box next to the sink and scrambling up the ladder to the Dome, my heart hammering my insides.
    *   *   *
    I don’t usually have to hide long. The knocks are mostly Jey’s friends coming to collect her, or a delivery of new gloves or shears for our father. Still, a minute behind the false back in the armoire can feel like an hour. Pieces of panic sting my mind as I wait in the blackness, a hundred things that could have given me away. Reasons the knock below could be a guard come to haul me to jail. No—more likely, to the Temple of Rasus.
    How I fought the priests with fire.
    How I stared at the obsidian redwing.
    How I spoke to the Onyx Staff.
    The questions I asked Nara Blake.
    The way I smelled the grass.
    The way I loved the peonies.
    But as suffocating as the blackness is, I survive. I always do. Jey’s thock thock with the broom handle on the ceiling under my feet soon signals it’s safe to come out.
    She is running hot water from the tap into the sink when I descend. Papa stands by the door reading a message. It was a courier, then. Nothing to be alarmed about. Probably instructions from Master Fibbori.
    Papa’s face says otherwise, though. I pause behind the ladder to the Dome, its cool metal surface between me and the kitchen. He looks to me, then Jey. My breath quickens.
    â€œWell,” Papa says.
    Jey looks up, detecting the same unsettling note in his voice that keeps me lurking behind the ladder. “What is it, Papa?”
    Papa blinks slowly and folds the message up. “Jey.” He sighs like a rumble from Mol himself. “Sit down, my girl.”
    Jey lowers herself into a chair as I come out from behind the ladder and join them at the table. I keep my fingers tightly entwined on my lap, but Jey is not used to controlling her own body and allows her nervous hands to tap the rough wooden surface of the table.
    Papa sighs again, putting the folded paper down on the table. “Jey,” he says, but doesn’t seem to know how to continue. I try to keep my gaze steady even as my blood throbs in my ears.
    â€œPapa,” Jey starts, and I shoot her a warning glance. She shuts her mouth. If he’s going to accuse us, let him do it. There’s no need to volunteer anything until we know what’s in that message.
    Papa reaches across the table and pats my sister’s hand, which surprises us both. “I know … I know you’re not a little girl anymore. I know it is exciting to