“What?” I shook my head. “No, that can’t be.”
“It’s true, Kyra.”
I pulled my hand from his to grab Mamá’s thimble in my pocket. “How could you have kept it from me all this time?” Although I wanted to shout, to scream at him, shock stole the force from my voice. It was almost like I’d Slipped again, and the world was crumbling around me. I leaned against the wall for support.
“I’m sorry, Kyra.” Papá took a step toward me. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I wanted to protect you like I wasn’t able to protect Gwen.”
“By lying to me?” I folded my cold, shaking hands against my chest so he couldn’t touch me again.
“Not lying,” he said with a pained expression. “Just not telling you the full truth.”
I scoffed and stepped back. “You’re a politician through and through, Papá.”
Someone knocked on the door, and I stiffened, remembering Papá’s afternoon appointment with people from his faction. I was in no shape to deal with guests right now. I had to get out of here.
I spun on my heel and ran to a side door.
“Kyra, wait!”
My hands shook as I pulled it open and escaped into the yard. Despite my overwhelming need for answers, I couldn’t be with Papá right now or be around other people. I needed time to calm down and think.
I turned onto the road without waiting for a steamcab or a server bot. Thank the aether the reporters and the guards from the last few days had finally let up. No one was around to stop me. The wind whispered against my face, cooling my heated cheeks and the tears streaming down my face as my leather shoes pounded against the road.
Papá—the one person who’d known about my ability—had been lying to me my entire life. My thoughts swirled through my mind. If Mamá was a time Slipper too, she’d somehow managed to hide her power without constantly wearing gloves. And if this ability was genetic, I might pass it to any children Desmarc and I had.
After a few minutes, a sharp stitch appeared in my side. I slowed to a walk, pressing a hand against the smooth leather of my corset. Even though I’d dismissed the thought before, it made sense that Mamá could Slip too. It explained how I inherited this strange ability—but it also unraveled a tangle of new questions I might never have the answer to. How did Mamá learn about her ability, and was that how she’d been able to avoid wearing gloves? Had my family always been able to do this? Were there even more people out there with these abilities than I thought?
I froze in the middle of the street as another thought hit me. I hadn’t been able to take that paper from the past until I’d been wearing Mamá’s ring. I pulled off my glove and stared down at it. The ring sparkled in the sunlight. Though its glow didn’t seem quite as bright as it had been in the vault’s dimness, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Something about the ring had changed my Slipping.
My brow furrowed as I thought. After getting the ring, I’d Slipped two times: once in my room with my engagement dress and once with the woman’s body during the debate. I’d thought bringing the letter back was the first strange thing that had happened, but even when I’d gone back in my own memory, I’d almost Slipped while already in the past. Maybe that had been because of Mamá’s ring, and not just because it was something new. That would explain why I’d come back with headaches after Slipping the two times since I started wearing it. Maybe Papá was right, and it was more dangerous than I thought.
Pulling my glove back on, I kept walking while my thoughts chased each other in circles. Even if I asked Papá after his meeting, he might be honest about Mamá or he might give me more half-truths. Maybe that was hypocritical considering I’d been lying about Slipping, but at least my choices didn’t affect him. At least Papá wasn’t my only option. I could also ask Hiram to look into things for me at the Iron Watch.
My heart clenched. No, I shouldn’t see Hiram. I was supposed to be cutting things off with him, not looking for excuses to visit him.
After half an hour of walking, I reached the edge of the Tenth Chime and crossed into the Eleventh, where Geneve’s shop was. Even as the streets filled with shoppers, I kept walking, not making eye contact with anyone. I considered stopping to hail a steamcab, but the exercise gave me a much needed chance to clear my head.
An airship passed under some of the large arches connecting the buildings. It was much smaller than the one Desmarc and I would use for our wedding. The thought of him brought back my dilemma. I’d planned on telling him about Slipping after we married, but now that I knew about Mamá, it wasn’t fair to wait. If this would affect our future, he needed to know before making the choice to marry me. But with him called away to that emergency meeting, I wouldn’t have a chance to tell him until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
A woman across the street whispered behind her fan, and her friend pointed and looked at me with wide eyes.
I turned down the street away from them, my feet automatically taking me to Cogs and Corsets as if seeking some sense of normalcy, but the streets only grew more crowded.
“That’s her,” a woman whispered to a friend as I passed. “Meridian Annandale’s daughter from the paper.”
“The one who helped catch that killer?”
“I’d consider working with the Blue Capes too if it meant getting to see that detective’s handsome face every day,” the first woman said with a giggle.
“Isn’t she engaged to Meridian Kingsford?”
I stared straight ahead and pretended not to have heard. At least the slight chill in the air helped counter my burning face. I increased my pace to get away from the women and their speculations, though I kept my head high and facing forward as I passed a clock shop with a bright blue roof.
I turned down the closest street, one that didn’t really bring me any closer to Geneve’s but was slightly more abandoned. Once I was out of view, I pulled up my hood to hide my face. A quarter of an hour later, I made it to Cogs and Corsets and practically threw the door open as I hurried inside.
“Oh.” Geneve, her wild curls piled high on top of her head, held a hand to her heart and looked at me with wide eyes. The dress she was putting on an automaton fell to the floor in a puddle of silky fabric.
“Sorry to startle you.” I closed the door behind me, much more gently this time, and checked to make sure the store was empty before pulling my hood off. Her assistant was nowhere to be seen. Probably off making a delivery somewhere.
Geneve shook her head and gave me a knowing look. “That’s all right, dear. I’m surprised you came out today considering all the gossip.”
“I had to.”
“I see.” Geneve, used to my struggles with Papá, said no more about it. She bustled into the back and returned with a dress in her arms. “Let’s see if we’re going to need any final alterations. I finished the hemming last night.”
“All right.” Did Geneve know about Mamá’s ability to Slip? I’d never told her after Papá forbade it when I was a child, but now knowing about Mamá and how close she’d been to Geneve, I couldn’t help but wonder.
I followed her into a fitting room draped in velvet curtains with brass tiebacks. “Geneve?”
“Hmm?” She hung up the dress, then helped me out of the rest of the clothes that were tricky to navigate without a server bot.
“Did Mamá ever do anything unusual?” I fiddled with part of the skirt.