Thorns of Decision (Dusk Gate Chronicles) (26 page)

Her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the front door, where she stopped again. Should she ring the doorbell? No. It was her house, too. She moved the loose panel under the eave, and took out the key.

As soon as she opened the door and stepped inside, she saw her. Her mother was sitting silently in the oversized chair in the living room, watching the door.

She stood there in the entryway for several minutes, trying to remember how to breathe, while her mother, too, waited wordlessly. When she finally trusted her voice, she turned to her mom. “Hi.”

Another long pause, while they both looked at each other, both seeming to have difficulty breathing. “Do you want to come in here and have a seat?” Megan finally asked.

Quinn had no idea what she wanted right then, but she nodded, dropped her coat and backpack on the floor, and made her way to the couch.

“Nathaniel told me he wouldn’t be surprised if you came back last night or tonight to talk, but I was sure I’d made you mad enough to keep you away for longer than three days,” she said. “I guess he already knows you better than I do. I should have gone down to meet you at the gate.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “You talked to Nathaniel.”

Her mother nodded, looking up, but not making eye contact. “After you left Thursday night ... I didn’t know what to think, what to do. Nathaniel came here and knocked on the door, but I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. He left the car in the driveway. I got up early on Friday morning, and drove Annie and Owen back down to Denver. The whole ride there and back I was thinking about how I’d acted toward you, and what I’d said, and hadn’t said ... About how much I’d probably hurt you.”

When her mom finally looked at her, tears in the corners of her eyes, the roughest edges of Quinn’s anger smoothed a little.

“When I got back to Bristlecone, I went straight to Nathaniel’s house. At the time, I had no idea how much Nathaniel had or hadn’t told you. I didn’t
know,
Quinn. When I realized where you must have been last weekend, all I could think was that he had gone behind my back and told you, when he’d
promised
. He’d promised me, he’d promised his own brother, and then he had my own child lying to me? Leaving me and running off to a completely different world where who knows what could happen?”

Quinn swallowed hard. In all the time since Nathaniel had told her about her father, she’d
never
seen that side of it. It made sense, really, because ...

“How could I have even imagined that you’d found the gate on your own? That possibility never even crossed my mind. And then, last night, when Nathaniel told me what had really happened, about how confused and upset you were and then I thought about how I’d behaved toward you this week...”

Tears began to flow down Quinn’s own cheeks. Without even paying attention to what she was doing, she pulled William’s handkerchief out of her pocket. As she brought the cloth to her face, she caught sight of his initials, embroidered in silver thread on the corner, and a second wave of emotion overtook her, mixing hot anger with the sadness.

“How dare you keep it from me in the first place, mom? There should have never been a possibility that I was ‘sneaking off’ with Nathaniel. I should have had a relationship with him this whole time. I should have known about the gate. I should have known
my family.
”

She dabbed furiously at her tears with the handkerchief while Megan stared at the floor.

It might have only been minutes, but it felt like an eternity before her mother’s gaze met hers again.

“Even if I could have told you, Quinn, I had no idea how. It’s not a good answer, I know, but I don’t
have
a good answer. It’s not something there are lessons for, you know, telling your child that she has a secret family who lives in a hidden world and she’s not allowed to know anything about them until she’s eighteen?”

“That’s the part I don’t get, Mom. Why keep it from me until I’m eighteen? What is going to change so magically when I have a birthday that I’ll suddenly be old enough to know my family?”

“I don’t know! Do you think that this is how I wanted things to be? I was only a couple of years older than you are now when I met your father. Imagine, just for a moment what it was like to meet and fall in love with this absolutely wonderful, loving man who was everything I ever wanted, perfect in every way, except he had this
little
secret.”

Her mom stopped, looking down at her hands and taking a deep breath before she continued. “And I
dealt
with that, Quinn. After he finally convinced me that it was actually true, I even tried to accept it. I didn’t understand it, but it was who he was, and I loved him.”

More tears ran down Quinn’s cheeks now, but she was too wrapped up in what her mother was saying to stop them. They dripped into her lap, making dark circles on the legs of her jeans.

“And then you came, and things became even more complicated. It was the only time he ever took me to his world, you know. He was always so adamant that it wasn’t safe for us to go there, but your having a “proper” Naming Ceremony was important enough for him to risk it.”

“What was so dangerous about it?” Quinn demanded. “I’ve been there four times now. I’m safe.”

“I don’t know. There were so many things he never told me about. He always just said that it was his own issue, and that he would take care of it, he would take care of everything. The only thing I had to do was help him guard the secret from you while you were a child. And then he died, and he left me here, alone, with you and this huge secret, and I wasn’t prepared for that. All I could do was keep my promise, keep you safe.”

“But I’m telling you, I’ve been there. I’ve spent
a lot
of time there. I’m not in any danger.”

“I asked Nathaniel about that last night. He said you’ve been safe, because the secret has been kept. Nobody knows who you really are.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean? How would I be in more danger just from people finding out I’m Nathaniel’s niece – Samuel’s daughter?”

Megan took another deep breath, and then reached over to something that was laying on an end table beside her chair. As she pulled it onto her lap, Quinn could see that it was a large envelope, made from the thick cloth-like paper that was manufactured in Eirentheos. “I went to the bank this morning, and took this out of the safety deposit box.”

Quinn frowned as her mother handed her the envelope. “What is it?” It felt heavy, weighted down in a bottom corner by something that made a muffled jingling sound with each small movement.

Megan didn’t answer, just pulled a tissue out of the box on the same table and dabbed her eyes with it as she watched.

She felt a strange sense of foreboding as she reached into the envelope. The first thing she pulled out was a large piece of paper. Covered with words written in elegant calligraphy, her first impression was that it was some sort of certificate. There was an entire paragraph at the top written in a language she didn’t understand. She frowned at her mom.

“It’s some sort of equivalent to a birth certificate in Samuel’s world. You received it at your Naming Ceremony.”

Sure enough, in large letters in the middle of the paper, she saw her name, or at least her first name. “Quinn Katriel
Rose?”
she asked.

“Samuel changed his last name to Barten when he came to live here. It was a secret even to people in this world that Nathaniel was his brother. That’s why on your original birth certificate here, when you were born, he made Rose your middle name. The Barten was changed to Robbins, of course, when Jeff adopted you. But in his world, you were given that name at your ceremony.”

Trembling, Quinn set the certificate to the side, wanting to examine it more closely later. She had a suspicion about what was making the jingling sounds at the bottom of the envelope, and she was both anxious and scared to confirm her thoughts. She tilted the envelope up, and two metal objects on chains dropped into her hands.

Although she’d been almost anticipating the appearance of a pendant, her heart almost stopped at the sight of the objects in her hand.

They were gift pendants, just as she’d expected. Both circles of the same size, one on a large, slightly tarnished chain, and one on a tiny chain that glimmered in the low light of the lamp. But it wasn’t the fact that they were pendants, nor even that there were two – of course her father’s would have been left for her as well. What made the room start spinning around her was the fact that the pendants were not the familiar silver worn by the royal family of Eirentheos. No. These pendants were gold. Philothean gold.

*          *          *

Holding the two necklaces in her hand, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She stared at them without really seeing them – nothing except the color was visible at all. In fact, her vision had gone blurry at the edges, and it only got worse when her hands started shaking.

“Quinn, what’s wrong?” Megan finally asked, enough concern in her voice that somewhere in the back of her mind Quinn wondered how long she’d been sitting there so silently.

She couldn’t answer, though. She didn’t even remember how to make her mouth work.

Alarmed now, Megan crossed the small space and sat down next to her on the couch. “What is it, sweetheart?”

She closed her eyes, trying to unfreeze her thoughts, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to tilt the world back onto its proper axis.

“Do you ... do you know what these are?” she finally managed to choke out.

“Samuel said they were some kind of necklace that they give to babies at their Naming Ceremonies in his world.”

Quinn nodded. “Yes, they are. You don’t know anything else about them?”

“No. I never thought anything more of them than that. I’d planned to give all of this to you at your eighteenth birthday. Although, yesterday, Nathaniel did say something that made me think there was more to it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that you might be upset when you saw them, and he wrote down his cell phone number for me, so that you could call him whenever you needed to. He said even if he was at work, he would make sure to pick up the phone for you.”

Quinn took a deep breath, trying to calm the shaking. She still hadn’t even really looked at the pendants, though a heavy feeling was settling in her stomach about what she might see when she did.

“Do you want to call him?” Megan’s voice was wary.

She shook her head, still just trying to breathe.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? What is going on? They’re just necklaces. Doesn’t William have one, too? Doesn’t everyone?”

She closed her eyes, steadying herself. “Yes, he does –they do.”
If they were of royal lineage, they did, anyway
.

“Then what is going on? I thought you already knew all of this – Nathaniel said he told you.”

“Well, clearly, he didn’t tell me everything.”

Megan’s eyes widened. “You knew you were related to them already, didn’t you? To the king and queen?”

“Sort of,” Quinn managed to squeak. Except that wasn’t what the pendants were telling her
at all.

Finally her vision cleared, the shaking subsided enough for her to pull the little discs into the light so she could examine them. She started with her father’s – the one on the larger, well-worn chain.

At the bottom, underneath a symbol she didn’t recognize – maybe a cross between a star and some kind of flower? – were the tiny, etched letters of her father’s name. Samuel Derek Rose. Hesitantly, not wanting to confirm her thoughts, but already nearly certain of what she would find, she flipped the pendant over.

It was there. Rather than the blank side that she would see on most pendants from Eir – from her father’s world, from
her
world – was the circular symbol that represented the kingdom of Philotheum. A symbol that appeared only on pendants belonging to the king’s own children – or those of his firstborn.