Last time, Rhine resolved to find her brother somehow.

Frail lilies grow, weary and flushed, their soil heavy with the scent of blood. And everywhere are the girls, gaping, their black eyes full of clouds, the smiles of their slit throats crusted red. Their mouths don’t move, but I understand what they want to say. You could have been one of us. Don’t forget.
My twin has gone, but he was here. His presence lingers, sweaty and fragrant, filling over with dust. He has searched these girls for me, so hardened to the sorrow that he can feel nothing for them, cannot even see that they are girls; he only sees that they don’t belong to him, are not his only sister.

So no, she’s not getting better. Maybe I should have guessed that when the book had her promise to actually do something as soon as she was done being sick.

She wakes up finally and hears all the kids doing stuff.

In another room some of the younger ones are learning their alphabet; if they can learn to read recipes, maybe they’ll become cooks, and a wealthy housemaster will buy them. If the girls excel and also grow to be pretty, maybe they’ll be brides or—dare they dream?—actresses like in the soap operas.

This is different than when Gabriel was sold because….?

Also the life of an actress in this world must be so horrible. Not only do you have to worry about sleeping with people to get the better job, but since you’re owned by them, they can then rent you out to any of your fans.

Rhine says she had pneumonia once, which you’d think would be just rampant in the cities.

I remember feeling absolutely miserable, but in a way that was natural. A real, human ailment that had been around for centuries, and one that my parents knew how to treat.
This, though, is an entirely new sensation. One that does not feel natural, or treatable. One that makes my mind bend into bizarre nightmares, leaves me burning and parched while my arms and legs lose sensation. My body isn’t craving hydration, or medicine, or even the warm puffs of air from devices meant to aid in breathing. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what is happening.

So…maybe Rhine’s special eyes are making her do some early withering? But maybe she’ll burn through the disease and come out the other side because it’s happening younger.

Also, Rhine, natural diseases aren’t all treatable and treatable diseases don’t have to be natural, stop being a nature cultist.

Claire shows up to make her eat, and one of the orphans has brought her a jar full of grass and ladybugs to keep her company, because the greatest tragedy of this book is that there are decent people still in it.

The oatmeal is full of raisins and slices of almond, and the residue grinds between my teeth like the abundant sugar in Cecily’s tea. Cecily, whose breasts were always leaking, whose eyes were puffy and purpled from tears. Has she pulled herself together by now? Taken my place on Linden’s arm at parties? Is he pouring her champagne and calling her sweetheart?

I feel kind of hopeful. Maybe Rhine’s actually trying to work herself up to being sorry for what she did to Cecily.

I don’t know why she doesn’t seem to realize that what Cecily did for her was much like what Jenna did for her, and that Jenna was killed for it. Maybe she doesn’t want to think of it.

Rhine proceeds to get more unbalanced from there. She’s walked to take a bath, but she can’t move her legs right. She wonders if it’s Evil Mad Scientist but thinks it can’t, she’s escaped, and she imagines Jenna’s ghost whispering if that’s really true.

She starts telling Claire that she’s dying so Claire needs to know about her brother to find him afterward and tell him. Claire says there’s no need because Rhine will do it, and when Rhine tries to keep talking she dumps water on her head, which seems kind of funny but given Rhine’s condition is actually rather dangerous.

And Rhine keeps getting worse. She thinks she’s feeling like what Jenna did.

But I can’t say this to Gabriel. It will only upset him, start him on a tangent about orphanages and the flu and my feeling better soon. So instead I say, “I don’t think Jenna died of the virus.”
“Me either,” he whispers.
“I mean, it was the virus—it had all its symptoms—but there was something off about it.”
Neither of us says the word we’re thinking. Vaughn. We don’t want it brought into this room.

This is pretty pointless. They both know Jenna was killed and the “something” off was that it came a year early. All the speculation here is known fact.

Rhine is sick and dazed for a bit more, thinking of random things and how wrong it is that people remember their deaths but not their births and all that.

And then I remember something I haven’t thought of for a long time. It was late, and I was very young. I remember liking how small I was in my bed; it made me feel safe. My brother was turned away from me, the blanket a canyon between our bodies. One of my parents opened the bedroom door, bringing in a rectangle of light. I closed my eyes. I hid in the dark, like I was playing a game of hide-and-seek. I heard the soft smack of a kiss being placed on my brother’s forehead. Then a kiss for me, and a hand smoothing away my hair. Footsteps retreating. The light stayed on my eyelids, though.
“Perhaps we should have told them from the start,” my father whispered.
“They’re only children,” my mother whispered back.
“Exceptionally bright children.”
“In a few years.” My mother’s voice was almost pleading. I heard my father kiss her.
“All right, love,” he said. Darkness, the click of the door. “All right.”

So. Rhine was made special this whole time, and I guess Evil Mad Scientist is just seeing someone else’s well-made but abandoned science project. I’m going to bet they’re some kind of chimera which is why they both have the same two color eyes, and this solves the problem somehow.

Also hey, so it’s her mom’s fault they don’t know whatever super important thing it was! At least her mom’s done something.

This sort of thing would presumably be in their notebooks that we were told were in the trunk, but either it isn’t because the author says so or they just never bothered looking because the author says so.

At least it ends prettily:

In my dream tonight the world dangles from my mother’s neck as she kisses me good night, and I reach up to grab it.