Aspen's heel had already dragged back through the powder-scattered floor, carving a little trench between them. The powder kept the shape after her foot stopped moving.
"I—uh, didn't mean to."
Raine's eyes followed the trench. For a second, neither of them moved. Aspen tried to put her foot back to where it had been, but that made it worse. Like trying to put a broken cup on a table and pretend the handle had not already snapped off in someone else's hand. "I'm sorry," she looked at Raine's hands instead of her eyes. Hands gave notice. Hands gave warnings.
Raine brought those hands to her own face, but she didn't cover it. Her fingertips stopped at her mouth, pressing lightly into the lower lip like she was trying to hold the sound Aspen just made there. She breathed through her fingers and found nothing. "You still say that."
Her thumb pressed hard into her own lip after, as if she could push the sentence back in.
Aspen's throat tightened, but the necklace held her breath in a soft, even line. She looked down at herself. Bare feet. Knees smeared with paste. The gray hair hanging beside her cheek, not long enough to hide behind. The wings she kept forgetting until they shifted and tugged at the meat of her back.
Thin wrists.
Scarred palms.
Not random scars. Not the messy little accidents of a clumsy body. Lines crossed both hands in the same places, shallow crescents under the pale fingers, old splits along the life-lines. There was a faint blue notch where the left thumb met the palm. The notch looked less like a cut than a place a thumb had worried open again and again. The aqua underneath pulsed through it all, brighter where the skin had healed badly, as if the veins remembered every place Lyra had opened herself and kept using those paths anyway.
"I don't know," she whispered. Sorry waited behind her teeth. She swallowed it and laid her hands back into the silk in the cocoon.
Raine did not answer. Instead, she kept looking at Aspen's hands. Her own hands had gone still at her sides, but not naturally. The fingers were caught half-curled. Her thumb rubbed once across the pad of her index finger, then stopped. Rubbed again. Stopped sooner. She stepped inside.
Not far. Just enough for the curtain to fall behind one shoulder. The triangle in the fabric vanished behind her wing. "You'd never do that."
"What?"
"You never let silk sit between your fingers." Raine's voice stayed careful. Too careful. "You hated the pull. You said it felt like old spit."
Aspen spread her fingers. The strands stretched between them, sticky and fine. The silk tugged little threads of paste from her skin. Raine's face waited for the flinch. Which answer hurts less? She wiped her hand against her dress on command. Raine saw that too. Her lower wings folded inward by a fraction, small enough to miss if Aspen had not just been looking for instructions.
"Not like that," Raine sighed.
Aspen stopped wiping.
The room sighed and Raine took two more steps. "Your voice is there," her eyes tracked the line of Aspen's jaw, then snagged on her mouth. "Almost. When you're scared. Why are you scared of me?"
Aspen's shoulders lifted before she could stop them. Raine's gaze sharpened on that. Her fingers rose, then folded back against her own chest. Thumb to knuckle. Press. Drag. Press. The motion had rubbed a small raw place beside the joint, bluish-pink against her skin.
"It's not enough." Her eyes stopped searching Aspen's face for some delayed correction. "Your wrist," she opened her palm for Aspen. "Please."
Aspen lifted her arm. Slowly.
Raine did not take her hand. She held out two fingers, palm-down, close enough for Aspen to hook them.
What is she waiting for?
Raine's face tightened by one small degree. Then she caught Aspen's wrist herself. She turned the wrist over, thumb sliding into the notch beneath the left thumb as if it belonged there. Her other hand came under Aspen's fingers before they could curl, lifting them open one by one with the careful impatience of someone who had done this to a hand that had always tried to hide.
"Not enough." Her thumb shifted once over a scar near the base of the palm. It did not stroke. It checked. "You don't remember? You used to hide this one under your sleeves. Even on white days."
Aspen looked at the scar. She had never seen it before.
Raine's thumb stopped moving. Aspen realized her face had done nothing. No recognition. No shame. No old reflex. Just looking.
Raine's fingers tightened. "You don't remember."
The body was there. The voice was there.
The lie had a simple shape: a small nod, a wet-eyed "I remember," one hand curling around Raine's two offered fingers the way Lyra must have.
"No, I don't. I'm sorry."
Raine dropped her wrist. Aspen's hand fell against her thigh, still warm where Raine held it. Raine wiped her thumb against her own skirt once, then looked horrified that she had. The remnant heat made her shiver. She took one step back. Then another. The hope left unevenly. Her wings lifted behind her, not wide now, but high and stiff, the green membranes drawn tight enough for the veins to show.
"I knew," she said, and hated the word enough to whisper it. "You never smelled like her. Not from the start."
Aspen looked down at herself again, stupidly, as if scent might be visible on the dress.
Raine's voice came thinner. "You don't smell like anything." The room seemed to pull farther away from them. Raine pointed at Aspen's chest. Her finger shook so hard the gesture lost its line.
"Where is your Cridh?"
Aspen touched the place she pointed to. Nothing was there except the invisible necklace, her borrowed pulse, and skin that had never belonged to her.
"I don't know what that means."
Raine flinched, her lower wings drawing in before the higher ones could pretend otherwise. Then her face hardened around the wetness in her eyes. "Dirty Rabat." The word went in before the meaning did. "What have you done?"
Aspen didn't know what a Rabat was, but her body didn't care. It heard the shape of it and folded around the sound. Her stomach dropped first. Then her eyes, dragged down to the place Raine pointed, as if whatever was missing from her chest might finally show itself if she looked ashamed enough.
I didn't do anything. The sentence had no handle. No adult had ever accepted it without asking why she sounded guilty.
The necklace pulsed, trying to smooth the reaction flat. It didn't reach deep enough. But is it? Am I being selfish? Say sorry before they decide what you are.
Her knees locked so hard the paste on them cracked. Her hands hovered near her own chest, useless and half-curled, not touching the necklace, not touching the skin, as if either one might prove Raine right.
Raine looked at her like she was a parasite.
But I don't deserve th—
The curtain moved. Not like Raine had moved it, not fast or startled. The triangle at its center folded in on itself. Then a hand slipped through, all knuckle and tendon, nails yellowed at the edges and cut short enough to look bitten by work.
An old woman entered one shoulder at a time, as if the room had to make room for her instead of the other way around. Silver hair floated around her head in a dry, weightless cloud, caught with little dark pins that looked more thorn than ornament. Her back was bent, but not weakly. Bent like a branch that had learned the wind's habits and stopped arguing.
She did not look at Aspen first.
Her eyes went to Raine's wings. The high, stiff angle. The lower edges tucked too close. The tremor in the blue veins.
Then to the fallen basin. Then to the trench Aspen's heel had carved in the paste. Then to Aspen's hands hovering near her chest, palms half-open in useless surrender. Finally to Aspen's throat, where the invisible necklace pulsed once under her skin. Only after that did she breathe in. Her nostrils widened by a careful degree. The whole room seemed to wait for the end of that inhale.
"There's really no smell on that girl. The Rooci play cruel games this season."
Smell..?
Wait, right. We can—Aspen took the smallest breath she could in the old woman's direction. Why do I have to smell it on command?
The room did not answer her, but the woman's scent did.
Five warm knocks moved through Aspen's body. Two in the soles of her feet. Then in both palms. The last one was at the top of her skull, where it spread through her temple like a hand smoothing dirt over a seed.
The smell opened. Dry hay, but not fresh-cut. Hay that had sat in a loft through a long wet season and come out useful anyway. Wildflowers crushed under a thumb and kept for poultice, not beauty. The mineral scrape of a stone pulled from a garden bed and set aside because it would be needed later. Roots with dirt still threaded in their skin, stubborn enough to crack a clay pot from the inside.
Her mouth filled with knowing. Not like a word spoken but like tasting a berry and recognizing it from its flavor.
Quinn.
A name made of practical earth. Of things stored underground because a storm could always return.
The name settled without asking for Aspen's permission. Not in her thoughts but lower than that. In the quiet place where her body had already learned wings, sap, scent, and all the other impossible things before Aspen could vote against them.
Quinn stood in front of her. Not dream-Quinn. Not hallucination-Quinn. Not some background extra her brain made out of drugs or VR or insanity. Quinn, with dry hay in her name and silver hair pinned back with thorn-dark clips. Quinn, whose hands Aspen knew had cut rot from roots, whose mouth had tightened at the smell Aspen didn't have, whose life had left enough weight in the air for Aspen's borrowed body to taste it.
Something tiny clicked at Aspen's throat. Not the necklace pulsing but a different sound. A bead cracked under a tooth. The warmth around her throat missed a beat. She brought her fingers to it, but only found skin. What? She chose to ignore it.
"Q-Quinn," the name came out rough, earthy at the back of her tongue. "You… you're Quinn?"
The old woman smiled. "Ina Quinn to you. I'm older."
Aspen swallowed the glob of spit in her mouth. "Are you going to explain everything?"
"Aye... that's a lot of work."
Aspen blinked. "Huh?"
Quinn smirked. "Why don't we do this? I answer what I can, and you let me help you get cleaned up. You look like you've played in dung."
Aspen recalled when she wiped the gray-brown paste from her lips.
"That isn't poop, is it?"