Miss Lara could feel the quiet danger coming off the man and didn’t waste a second in telling her girls to bring out the file records from the storage room. It would be bad to offend a man with such bearing in the absence of their own pack patrols.

"Here are the files," Miss Lara announced as the sack of files was brought down from the storage room.

The moment they were set down, Viola pulled her hand from Sebastian’s and rushed forward, tearing through the pages to find the years she and her sister had first arrived at the orphanage. She scattered the papers with shaking hands, barely aware of anything around her except the ringing in her ears and the weight of what Miss Lara had just said pressing down on her.

What did she mean by only Ivy had ever been here? Viola had left this place wearing Ivy’s identity and left her sister behind as Serena, and she didn’t want to think about what the absence of that name in these records meant.

Viola found the years she was searching for and went through the names one by one, and just as the woman had said, she realized with a sinking and sickening feeling that only the name Ivy was recorded. There was no Serena anywhere on the page.

How was this possible? It made no sense. She had lived here for seven years alongside her sister and the records showed nothing of a second girl, only Ivy’s adoption and the Lindens’ signature at the bottom of the page.

Viola began to shake her head slowly and she felt Sebastian come to stand close behind her, looking over her shoulder at the file in her hands. She turned teary eyes up to him and whispered, "My sister....they are saying I have no sister. It’s a lie. I had a twin sister. She was lovely and kind. She was here when I left..."

Miss Lara looked genuinely confused at the woman’s insistence that she had a twin sister. "We never had twins in this orphanage. As you can see in the records, there was only ever the name Ivy and no Serena. Could it be that you have things mixed up somehow?"

Viola turned angry, tearful eyes on the woman for daring to paint her as the liar when she knew exactly what she was talking about. "You have done something to my sister, haven’t you? We were twins and I am not leaving here today until you bring her out or tell me what happened to her."

"Ma’am, that is a very serious accusation to make without any evidence. We—"

"Call out every single person in this building." Sebastian cut the woman off, his voice dropping to the kind of quiet that was far more dangerous than shouting. "I want every person in this building out here right now." He ordered, watching Viola shake her head over and over again, refusing to accept what the records were telling her.

Miss Lara didn’t argue with them. She pulled a string on the wall and a bell rang out through the building, and immediately footsteps were heard on the stairs as children and older girls came rushing out. Julia was among them.

Viola’s eyes trailed over the faces, but none of them were her sister’s, and she didn’t recognize any of them except for Julia’s. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

She turned on Julia, stepping forward to grip her shoulders. "Julia you were there with us. We shared a bunk and a room. You and Ivy used to be best friends and you disliked Serena, so tell Miss Lara that we were twins and that my sister was here."

Julia stepped back from Viola’s grip and said, "I shared a room with a girl called Ivy. I never knew any Serena. Are you Ivy?"

Viola put her hands in her hair and gripped it in frustration as tears of anguish rolled endlessly down her cheeks and she shook her head. "Why are you all doing this to me? What have you done to my sister? Why are you lying to me like this? Please just tell me where she is and I will do anything you want in return. Give me back my sister." She pressed her hand over her mouth and began to sink toward the floor.

Memories of Ivy’s smiling face flashed through her mind. Of the words her sister used to whisper to her to make her feel better about their condition. Of the caring little girl who had been forced to act way beyond her age just to protect a twin sister who hadn’t deserved half of what she gave her.

"No...I had a twin sister. We used to live here..." Viola muttered brokenly, and then as if something suddenly occurred to her, her anguished eyes snapped to Miss Lara and she whispered, "Have you killed my sister the way you killed those other kids? Have you buried her in a well and removed her records?"

She felt Sebastian’s hands come down on her shoulders and she turned to him, getting to her feet and gripping the front of his shirt with both fists.

"Sebastian they have killed my sister! They have killed her and hidden it! They didn’t let her grow up, they killed her! You have to believe me, I had a twin sister. I swear on the moon goddess, we were two!" She cried, shaking his shirt front, desperate for him to believe her and not look at her like she had lost her mind.

She didn’t even give him the chance to reply before she released him and swung back toward Miss Lara like a person blinded by her emotions, seizing the woman by the throat and screaming,

"Where is my sister? What have you done to her?!"

Viola didn’t care if she hurt the woman. All she wanted was to hear that she hadn’t been losing her mind, that the sister she had known and loved hadn’t been some figure she had made up inside her own head, because she knew she had one. She knew it. These people had taken her.

Miss Lara’s eyes went wide and red as the air left her throat, but Viola didn’t let go. "I...I am sorry, ma’am, but we never knew any Serena..." She wheezed out.

"LIES!" Viola screamed, shaking the woman. "You are lying!"

Sebastian saw her losing control completely and moved forward, grabbing her and pulling her away from the woman, but Viola fought him like a hellcat, twisting and pushing against his hold to get free. He added more of his strength and hauled her back, wrapping his arms around her from behind and caging her arms against her chest.

"Calm down. Shhh. Let me handle this." He whispered into her ear, and she collapsed into sobs against him.

"N-nobody w-wants to believe that I have a sister..." She wept, her voice broken and small.

Sebastian kept his arms locked around her and then buried his face in the crook of her neck, his voice dropping low as he whispered, "I believe you. You have a sister. Calm down and I will help you find her."

Viola felt the fight drain out of her body at his words. She turned her head to look at his face and found nothing but sincerity looking back at her, and it was like seeing him differently in that moment as he promised, "Whatever they have done to her, they will confess it before they know what came over them. I need you to calm down first. Can you do that for me?"

Viola nodded, her eyes not leaving his, feeling as though they were pulling her back from the edge of herself and compelling her to breathe. "You believe me?" She breathed quitely, tears rolling down her lashes.

Sebastian wiped away the tears with a tender touch as he whispered, "I do."