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"No," said Cinder, bored

"Well, she does Miss Scarlet Benoit Supposedly she just turned eighteen, but--brace yourself--she doesn’t have any hospital records Get it? Holy spades, I’ back, Thorne peered at her upside down "She doesn’t have any hospital records"

"So?"

He spun the chair to face her "Do you know a single person asn’t born in a hospital?"

Cinder considered "Are you suggesting that she could be the princess?"

"That’s precisely what I’"

The netscreen turned to a profile and picture of Scarlet Benoit She was pretty, with pronounced curves and fiery red curls

Cinder squinted at the iirl without a birth record A ward of Michelle Benoit

How convenient

"Well, then Excellent detective work, Captain"

Twenty-Five

Scarlet dreamt that a blizzard had covered all of Europe in neck-deep snow A child again, she ca in front of the wood stove "I thought I’d found soranduess I’ll have to wait until spring now to be rid of you"

She stoked the fire The sparks flew into Scarlet’s eyes, stinging, and she woke up etness on her cheeks, her fingers like ice For a long time she couldn’t sort out as a drearand to send her away, but not when she was a child A teenager Thirteen

Had it been January, or later still in the winter? She struggled to piece together thawing memories She’d been sent out to milk the cow, a chore she’d despised, and her hands were so nuht

Why hadn’t she been in school that day? Was it a weekend? A vacation?

Oh--right She’d been visiting her father, just come back the day before She was supposed to stay with hi, the coht Scarlet had taken the train horandrandry that Scarlet hadn’t coht Scarlet was still

It was the last tilev The last tih her chores, desperate to be finished with theet war back to the house that she saw the hover out front She’d seen plenty hovers when she lived in the city, but they were rare out in the country, where the farh the back door and heard her grandmother in the kitchen, and a man, their voices muffled She inched her way around the staircase, her feet silent on the terra-cotta tiles

"I can’t iine what a burden she’s been for you all these years," said thethe kitchen’s warh the cracked door He was at the table, aface Scarlet had never seen him before

"She hasn’t been as randrown attached to her after all these years But Ieach time an unfamiliar ship flies by"

Scarlet’s throat constricted

"You said she’d be ready to go in a week’s tian see for If the procedure goes smoothly it could even be sooner But you’ll have to be patient with her She’ll be quite weak, and more than a little bewildered"

"Understandably so I can’t iine what this must be like for her"

Scarlet cla

"You have accommodations set up?"

"Yes, we’re quite prepared It will take so used to for us as well, but I’m sure it will all work out once she’s settled in I have two girls of e--twelve and nine I’m sure they’ll adore each other, and I will treat her as if she were my own"

"And what about Madame Linh? Is she prepared?"