Page 124 of Bittersweet & Strange

“I never lived in your father’s castle.”

“Then why do you know me?”

Her hands stop. Some of the authority leaves her face when she looks at me again, replaced by something older and far more personal.

“Because Belle was my sister.”

The room becomes very quiet.

Even Boone moves, his head lifting slowly from the chair.

I stare at Mara. “My mother never had a sister.”

A humorless smile touches her mouth. “Your mother had quite a few things she never told you.”

I study her face again, searching for anything familiar now that I know what I’m supposed to be seeing, and suddenly there are pieces of my mother everywhere. Not enough that I would have recognized them on my own, but enough that I cannot stop seeing them once I know. The shape of her eyes. The stubborn line of her mouth. The way one eyebrow rises slightly higher than the other when she’s irritated.

“You knew about me.”

“Of course I knew about you.”

“Then where were you?”

The question comes out in a harsh snap, exactly as I mean it.

Mara takes it without flinching.

“Here.”

“For thirty-two years?”

“Yes.”

“You lived a day’s ride from that castle my entire childhood and never once came to see your sister?”

Boone shifts in the rocking chair.

Mara’s mouth presses tighter. “Your mother asked me not to.”

I laugh once, without humor. “Convenient.”

“I know how convenient it sounds.”

“My mother spent years alone on that mountain with a man who hurt her, and her sister apparently remained down here waiting for an invitation.”

The words hit exactly where I intend them to.

“I went up the mountain once,” she says. “Your father met me before I ever reached the castle. I told him I was there to see Belle, and he told me if I came back, he would make certain I never made it down the mountain again.”

“That stopped you?”

“No.”

Her answer is immediate.

“I went back.”

Mara lowers herself into the chair across from me, though I still haven’t taken the one she ordered me into.