The twirling girl turned red as berries, the lady with the ribbons broke out in a laugh, but Minerva didn’t crack a smile. She looked as wary as Scarlett was feeling.
Scarlett knew her mother went on to marry Marcello Dragna, not Gavriel. But the entire exchange still left Scarlett with a deep, heavy feeling of dread as the conversation between the women ended. The ill feeling remained with Scarlett as she followed Paradise from the dress shop back into another icy alley.
Scarlett had no love for Marcello, but as much as Scarlett hated him, if Paradise never married him, then Tella would never be born. Scarlett quickened her steps as her mother disappeared around the corner.
Scarlett knew she wasn’t supposed to interfere. The Assassin had warned her not to change—
Her back slammed against a brick wall of a dead-end street, as Paradise placed a knife to Scarlett’s throat.
She fought to take a ragged breath. Seeing Paradise like this was like peering in a threatening mirror. This was the mother Scarlett had originally expected to meet. But she couldn’t feel triumphant about it; if this encounter went the wrong way it could destroy the entire future Scarlett knew, or end Scarlett’s life.
“What’s a pretty little girl like you doing following—” Paradise cut off abruptly. She must have seen the resemblance as well, though her response was to hold the blade closer to Scarlett’s throat.
“Who are you? Why are you trying to look like me?” She spoke even faster than she had in the shop. “Tell me in the next ten seconds or I’ll slit your throat and walk away before your body hits the snow. One. Two. Three.”
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Scarlett said.
“Not the right answer.” Paradise flashed a vicious grin. “Four. Five.”
“I’m here because your family is in danger.”
“Don’t have a family,” she sang. “Seven. Eight.”
“Yes, you do, in the future.”
Paradise didn’t even bother to respond to this claim. “Nine.”
“You have a daughter,” Scarlett said. “You’re pregnant with her right now!”
Paradise stopped counting.
“How did you know that? I’ve only told one person that, and he wouldn’t say a word.” Her eyes narrowed on Scarlett and then went wide. “Where did you get those earrings?” She dropped the box she’d been holding and touched her own ears, where a matching pair of jeweled baubles rested.
“They were from you,” Scarlett said. “You told me my father gave them to you because scarlet was your favorite color. It’s also what you named me.”
Paradise stumbled back, but continued to hold out the knife. Gray mist swirled around her; she was confused but no longer feeling hostile, though on the outside she kept her expression severe.
“You also change your name to Paloma,” Scarlett said. “You leave this identity and turn into something close to a legend.”
This made a hint of her grin return, but it didn’t meet her eyes the way Scarlett’s grins always did. “All right, say I do believe you, why are you here?”
To save the world. To stop a monster. To see you. “I’m only here to steal a dress.”
Paradise laughed, softening a little more. “Then you’re a terrible thief. I must not have raised you very well.”
Scarlett was tempted to tell her the truth, to tell Paradise that she’d been a dreadful mother, that she’d left when her daughters had needed her most and she hadn’t come back. But Paradise wasn’t that woman yet, and Scarlett wondered if maybe she’d never actually been that woman.
Somewhere along the way Scarlett had come to believe her mother didn’t love her, or really love anyone. If she’d loved her daughters she wouldn’t have left them or hurt them—people didn’t hurt the ones they loved. But until Scarlett had appeared, her mother had been bursting with love. She’d been full of so much love she was going to ask a man to marry her. But she didn’t. In Scarlett’s world she went on to betray him instead, and Scarlett wondered if Paradise did all of this because Paradise loved her.
Even now Scarlett could see the love taking over Paradise’s emotions as her eyes continued to dart from her earrings to Scarlett’s face. In this timeline they’d only just met, but Paradise was already choosing to love Scarlett.
Scarlett could scarcely comprehend it. Whenever she loved, she loved fiercely, but it never came this easily, and she wouldn’t have expected it to come so effortlessly to Paradise.
Clearly, Scarlett had never really known her mother. But there were a few things she did know about her.
“You were the best mother you could be,” Scarlett said. “You sacrificed everything for my sister and me.”
“You have a sister?” Paradise’s entire face lit up, making her look even more magnetic, and Scarlett wished Tella could have seen how happy their mother was to hear she was having a second daughter. “I can’t wait to tell your father about this.”